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YOUNG   VIRGIL'S    POETRY 


By  Edward  Kbnnard  Rand 


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Printed  from  the 

HARVARD  STUDIES  IN  CLASSICAL  PHILOLOGY 

Vol.  XXX,  igig 


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YOUNG  VIRGIL'S  POETRY 
By  Edwaso  Eennasd  Rand 

VIRGIL  was  bom  a  poet  but  he  was  also  made.  As  with  most 
writers  whose  works  have  lasted,  his  genius  found  expression  in 
a  thoroughly  harmonious  form  only  after  varied  experiments  in  aUen 
fields.  Epic  was  his  goal.  His  temperament  as  revealed  in  his  mature 
productions  is  imperial  and  Augustan.  But  Virgil  started,  naturally, 
with  the  literary  fashions  which  prevailed  when  he  began  to  write. 
Catullus  and  Calvus  were  the  popular  poets  of  the  day.  Their  themes 
were  largely  those  of  their  Greek  masters  of  the  Alexandrian  age,  who 
had  practised  mainly  the  smaller  literary  varieties  —  mime,  pastoral, 
elegy,  and  epigram.  They  had  maintained  drama  in  a  new  and  im- 
portant species  of  comedy,  but  tragedy  had  virtually  disappeared. 
Epic  either  had  dwindled  into  short  narrative  poems,  "  epyllia,"  or 
else,  if  it  retained  its  length,  had  submitted  in  spirit  to  the  pervasive 
influence  of  erotic  elegy.  The  genius  of  Catullus  lifted  his  work  high 
above  his  models;  however  we  technically  class  him,  for  sheer  lyric 
intensity  he  is  the  peer  of  Sappho  or  of  Bums.  But  his  craftmanship 
is  Alexandrian.  In  the  earlier  Republican  period,  national  desires  had 
found  expression,  however  imperfectly,  in  epic  and  tragedy,  the  forms 
which  were  best  suited  to  the  Roman  temperament,  and  which  the 
writers  of  the  day,  Ermius,  Naevius,  Pacuvius,  foimd  lacking  in  con- 
temporary Greek  literature.  They  turned  to  the  older  authors  for 
their  vital  needs.  Nothing  could  better  show,  however  much  they  de- 
pended on  Greek  forms,  the  individuaUty  and  sincerity  of  their  effort 
to  create  a  national  and  Roman  literature.  Virgil's  ambition,  develop- 
ing slowly  at  first  in  an  aUen  atmosphere,  was  eventually  the  same. 

The  record  of  our  poet's  progress  from  Alexandrian  to  Augustan,  — 
a  more  pleasurable  history  to  follow  than  Milton's  transformation 
from  Elizabethan  to  Puritan  —  is  partly  displayed  in  the  ascent  from 
Bucolics  to  Georgics  to  Aeneid.  It  may  be  more  minutely  traced  if  we 
may  regard  as  genuine  certain  of  the  minor  poems  attributed  to  him. 

103 


41612C 


ifei"'  '''  y '-''.'  *.' :  ..:-^^%w?v/  Kennard  Rand 

The  question  of  their  genuineness  has  of  late  been  hotly  argued.  Once 
generally  accepted  —  though  arousing  occasional  doubt  even  in  medi- 
aeval minds — they  fell  easy  prey  to  the  higher  critics  of  the  nineteenth 
century;  the  little  poems  were  unworthy  of  the  author  of  the  Bucolics, 
the  Georgics,  and  the  Aeneid,  and  were  therefore  not  his.  Gudeman, 
in  his  Latin  Literature  of  the  Empire,'^  declares  that  their  "  spurious- 
ness  is  estabUshed  by  incontrovertible  proofs."  Munro,  speaking  of 
the  Aetna, ^  remarks,  "As  it  has  manifestly  no  claim  whatever,  less 
even  than  the  culex  or  ciris  to  be  his  work,  I  need  not  controvert  what 
none  will  now  maintain."  These  were  typical  utterances  of  the  last 
century. 

As  the  new  century  came  in,  Franz  Skutsch  published  a  little  work 
entitled  Aus  Vergils  Friihzeit  (1901),  as  a  result  of  which  the  sup- 
posedly dead  issue  became  very  much  alive.  Skutsch  maintained, — 
uncontrovertibly,  I  believe,  —  that  the  Ciris,  which  is  full  of  the 
phrasings  of  Virgil's  Aeneid,  is  not  a  later  imitation  of  that  poem,  but 
a  precursor.  It  belongs  in  type  and  atmosphere  with  the  epyllia  of 
Catullus's  day.  It  is  Virgil  who  imitates  the  author  of  the  Ciris. 
That  author,  Skutsch  reasoned,  —  this  time,  I  believe,  not  incontro- 
vertibly  —  was  Virgil's  intimate  friend  and  brother  poet,  Cornelius 
Gallus.  Skutsch  also  argued  for  the  early  date,  if  not  for  the  genuine- 
ness of  the  Culex.  He  was  vigorously  attacked,  particularly  by  Leo,' 
but  whether  or  no  all  details  of  his  argument  were  accepted,  the  num- 
ber of  those  who  would  admit  some,  at  least,  of  the  disputed  works 
into  the  Virgilian  canon  has  constantly  been  on  the  increase.  We  may 
measure  the  change  in  sentiment  by  comparing  the  opinion  of  Schanz,* 
who  regards  as  Virgilian  only  four  or  five  of  the  short  poems  of  the 
Catalepton,  with  that  of  Vollmer,  the  editor  of  the  minor  works  in  his 
revision  of  Baehrens'  Poetae  Latini  Minor es,^  who  finds  no  reason  for 
doubting  the  genuineness  of  any  of  the  poems  included  in  the  ancient 
account  of  Virgil's  writings.  A  compromise  between  the  two  ex- 
treme views  is  offered  by  Mackail,  who,  as  an  eminent  literary  critic 

1  II  (1899),  I. 

2  H.  A.  J.  Munro,  Aetna,  revised,  etc.,  Cambridge,  Eng.,  1867,  p.  32. 

*  Hermes,  xxxvii,  14  ff.;  xlii,  35  ff. 

*  Geschichte  der  rotnischen  Litteratur  (1899  ^),  pp.  62  ff. 

*  I  (1910);  also  Sitzungsber.  der  bayer.  Akad.  (1907),  335  ff.;  Heft  11  (1908). 


Young  Virgil's  Poetry  105 

and  admirer  of  Virgil,  does  not  desire  to  have  inferior  matter  palmed 
off  on  his  poet,  yet  who,  as  a  reasonable  man  cannot  resist  the  evi- 
dence recently  adduced  for  the  genuineness  of  the  Appendix  Vergili- 
ana.  Mackail,  agreeing  heartily  with  the  feeling  of  the  last  century 
that  the  poems  in  general  cannot  be  ascribed  to  Virgil,  puts  them  in 
the  realm  of  Virgilianism.^  Virgil  was  one  of  a  group  of  brother-poets, 
who  like  Sidney  and  Spenser,  Wordsworth  and  Coleridge,  collabo- 
rated. This  convenient  explanation  allows  us  to  claim  for  Virgil  as 
many  and  as  much  of  the  minor  poems  as  we  can  stand. 

Now  this  long  debate  is  nothing  new.  One  can  breathe  a  truly 
modern  air  of  controversy  if  one  turns  to  a  work  published  in  the  year 
of  the  Independence  of  America  by  that  excellent  Dutch  scholar, 
Johannes  Schrader.*  Skutsch's  theory  of  the  authorship  of  the  Ciris 
was  going  the  rounds  even  then.  But  even  then  it  was  no  new  thing. 
Hubert  van  Gififen  (Gifanius)  in  the  sixteenth  century  had  first,  it 
seems,'  tracked  Gallus  to  his  lair,  and  Caspar  Barth  and  Friedrich 
Taubmann  in  the  seventeenth,  Fontanini  in  the  eighteenth,  had 
passed  on  the  torch  of  his  discovery,  which  Johann  Friedrich  Voss 
caught  up  not  long  after  Schrader  wrote.  Schrader  says  pithily  of 
Fontanini:  equidetn  doleo  virum  dodum  magno  conatu  magnas  nugas 
dixisse.  He  gives  an  excellent  review  of  the  problem  of  the  Ciris, 
bringing  up  nearly  all  the  points  that  are  made  nowadays,  except  for 

*  Class.  Rev.,  xxii  (1908),  65  ff.;  Lectures  on  Poetry,  London  (191 1),  pp.  48  ff. 

*  Liber  Emendationum,  Leouardiae  (1776),  pp.  31  ff. 

*  Schrader  quotes  the  words  of  Barth:  Obertus  Gifanius  odoratus  est  ex  sexta 
Ecloga  Maronis  poetnation,  quod  Ceiris  nomine  Virgilio  adscribilur,  ad  Cornelium 
Galium  pertinere  posse.  Skutsch,  pp.  62,  136  ff.,  after  much  search,  could  not  find 
any  expression  of  the  new  idea  in  the  works  of  Gifanius.  In  his  famous  edition  of 
Lucretius,  1566,  Gifanius  attributes  Ciris  to  Virgil,  nor  is  any  change  made  in  the 
second  edition  of  this  work  in  1595.  Skutsch  concluded,  therefore,  that  Gifanius 
came^pon  the  idea  late  in  life,  and  that  it  was  orally  transmitted  to  his  pupils. 
Batm  {Advers.  3,  21)  and  Taubmann  {Virgilii  Opera,  1618,  on  Eel.  6,  74)  seem  to 
be  independent  witnesses.  Fontanini,  the  main  source  for  Schrader,  evidently  had 
not  read  any  statement  in  Gifanius,  for  his  words  are  (Justus  Fontaninus,  Historia 
Lileraria  Aquilejensis,  1742,  p.  32):  Fredericus  Taubmannus  ad  Eclogam  X  {sic!) 
inter  summi  poetae  opera  ab  se  illustrata,  &  edita  ...  &  Barthius  .  .  .  testes  mihi 
sunt  Obertum  Gifanium  primum  omnium  olfecisse  etc.  Fontanini,  writing  the 
history  of  Aquileia,  claims  Gallus  for  Friaul  rather  than  Fr^jus,  devotes  a  plump 
chapter  to  him,  and  is  only  too  glad  to  add  Ciris  to  the  string  of  his  achievements. 


io6  Edward  Kennard  Rand 

scientific  statistics  on  metrical  and  stylistic  matters  and  the  minute 
accounts  of  the  tradition  of  the  manuscripts  that  we  owe  to  the  school 
of  Traube.  I  cannot  pretend  to  offer  a  startling  array  of  new  facts  in 
the  present  paper;  my  desire,  like  Schrader's,  is  to  return  to  a  once 
generally  accepted  tradition. 


The  starting-point  of  investigation  should  be  the  ancient  external 
evidence  on  the  question.  Too  often  it  has  been  the  critic's  reverence 
for  Virgil,  or  rather  for  of  his  own  definition  of  what  Virgil's  poetry 
must  have  been.  This  external  evidence  is  furnished  in  the  life  of  the 
poet.  Donatus,  who,  as  is  generally  agreed,^  is  drawing  from  Sueto- 
nius, thus  describes  young  Virgil's  earliest  work.^ 

Poeticam  puer  adhuc  auspicatus  in  Ballistam  ludi  magistrum  ob 
infamiam  latrociniorum  coopertum  lapidibus  distichon  fecit: 

monte  sub  hoc  lapidum  tegitur  Ballista  sepultus; 
nocte  die  tutum  carpe  viator  iter. 

deinde  catalepton  (catalecton  codd.)  et  priapea  et  epigrammata  et 
diras,  item  cirim  et  culicem,  cum  esset  annorum  XVI  (XXVI  Scaliger, 
Brummer).  cuius  materia  tahs  est:  (there  follows  a  brief  summary 
of  the  Culex,  ending  with  the  final  distich  of  the  poem  preserved  to 
us),  scripsit  etiam  de  qua  ambigitur  Aetnam.  Mox  cum  res  Romanas 
incohasset,  offensus  materia  ad  bucoUca  transiit. 

Servius  makes  substantially  the  same  statement.'  After  giving  the 
distich  on  Ballista,  he  adds: 

Scripsit  etiam  septem  sive  octo  libros  hos:  Cirin  Aetnam  Culicem 
Priapeia  Catalecton  {sic  codd.)  Epigrammata  Copam  Diras. 

The  only  other  important  notice  in  the  material  pubUshed  by 
Brummer  is  in  the  vita  compiled  by  Philargyrius,*  who,  according  to 
the  best  manuscript,  has  the  correct  form  Catalepton. 

There  are  two  items  of  difference  in  the  lists  of  Donatus  and  Ser- 
vius.   The  first  is  that  whereas  the  former  expresses  a  doubt  about 

^  See  Sommer,  De  P.  Vergilii  Maronis  Catalepton  Carminibus,  Halle,  1910,  p.  19. 
He  refers  to  Koortge,  Dissert.  Philolog.  Halens.  xiv,  (1901),  189  ff. 

*  Vitae  Vergilianae.    Recensuit  lacobus  Biaunmer,  Leipzig  (191 2),  p.  4. 

*  Ibid.,  p.  69. 

*  Ibid.,  p.  42. 


Young  VirgWs  Poetry  107 

the  Aetna,  Servius  puts  it  near  the  head  of  the  list.  Yet  we  must 
observe  that  the  doubt  is  not  directly  stated  as  that  of  Donatus  him- 
self; otherwise  he  would  have  said  something  like  dicitur  autem  etiam 
Aetnam  scripsisse  de  quo  tamen  carmine  amhigendum  est. 

Further,  the  words  etiam  de  qua  ambigitur  are  omitted  in  the  San- 
gallensis  862  s.  X  (=  G),  one  of  the  most  important  codices  of  the 
Vita,  while  in  the  Bemensis  172  5.  IX-X  (=  B),  the  clause  de  qua 
ambigitur  follows  Aetnam  (aetham  B),  with  marks  for  transposition 
inserted,  and  in  the  Parisinus  7930  5.  XI  ( =  E)  the  clause  has  been 
shifted  to  the  same  place,  without  the  addition  of  the  signs  of  trans- 
position. As  Brummer  has  made  clear,*  the  manuscripts  of  the  Vita 
spring  from  one  ancestral  codex  ^  (I  will  call  it  X)  in  two  Unes  of 
succession  (Y  and  Z).  G  is  the  only  ancient  representative  of  Z;  E 
and  B  are  on  different  offshoots  of  the  Y  branch.  It  looks,  therefore, 
as  if  the  clause  de  qua  ambigitur  were  written  above  the  line  in  X, 
omitted  in  G  and  inserted  now  before  and  now  after  Aetnam  in  the 
Y  manuscripts. 

We  now  may  note  that  both  Y  and  Z  show  in  various  places  the 
presence  of  interpolations  and  substitutions.'    These  show  the  char- 

^  Philologus,  kxii  (1913),  278  ff.    See  also  his  edition  of  Vitat  VergUianae  (1912). 

'  The  error  ut  for  oc  in  1.  96  suggests  that  this  archet}T)e,  X,  was  copied  from  a 
,  minuscule  manuscript  in  which  the  open  a  appeared.  The  interchange  of  v  and  b 
(Cartili  1.  180)  and  that  of  r  and  s  (Vipranius  1.  180)  occur.  The  first  of  these 
errors  is  frequent  in  copies  of  Spanish  script,  and  both  are  characteristic  of  the 
Insular  variety.  These  data,  however,  are  in  themselves  insufficient  to  warrant 
a  conclusion  as  to  the  locality  in  which  the  parent  manuscript  was  written.  There 
are  various  indications  of  another  kind  that  the  Minor  Poems  came  into  France 
from  Ireland,  where  the  study  of  Virgil  flourished  in  the  period  preceding  the 
Carolingian  epoch.  We  need  a  si>ecial  treatment  of  the  part  played  by  Insular 
scholars  in  the  transmission  and  interpretation  of  the  text  of  Virgil  from  the  seventh 
through  the  ninth  centuries.  Brummer  shows  {Philologus,  loc.  cit.  p.  289)  that  the 
Vita  Gudiana  I  is  connected  with  the  school  of  John  the  Scot,  who  is  cited  in  the 
Vita.  I  would  add  that  the  kind  of  introduction  that  John  the  Scot  might  himself 
have  written  is  shown  in  Monacensis  18059  ^-  ^  (see  Thilo  and  Hagen's  edition  of 
Servius,  p.  Ixxxv  note).  Lindsay  has  opened  up  a  new  field  in  his  recent  investi- 
gations of  mediaeval  glossaries.  Following  his  clues,  N.  F.  G.  Dall  {Class.  Quart., 
xii  (1918),  171  ff.)  finds  in  the  Afatim  and  Second  Amplonian  Glossaries  evidence  of 
an  annotated  edition  of  Virgil  compiled  in  England  in  the  seventh  century. 

*  For  Y,  see  16,  22,  165.  Z,  as  represented  by  G,  shows  in  general  a  more  sober 
and  reliable  text.    The  errors  of  G,  though  often  serious,  are  due  to  scribal  blimders 


lo8  Edward  Kennard  Rand 

acter  of  the  annotations  with  which  X  was  apparently  provided. 
Some  scholar  who  used  the  life  of  Virgil  in  his  classes  accompanied  his 
instruction,  in  the  mediaeval  manner,  with  running  comments,  now 
suggesting  a  synonym,  now  paraphrasing  a  clause  or  sentence,  now 
adding  a  bit  of  information,  or  misinformation,  as  in  the  remark  on  the 
genuineness  of  the  Aetna.  What  his  source  was  in  the  present  case,  we 
have  no  means  of  knowing.  While  I  would  not  deny  the  possibility 
that  the  clause  de  qua  ambigUur  is  part  of  the  original  text,  that  G 
independently  omitted  ^  and  B  and  E  independently  transposed,  it  is 
more  probable,  I  believe,  that  we  can  trace  this  doubting  about  Aetna 
no  farther  back  than  to  the  authority  of  an  earUer  scholiast.  Hagen 
was  justified,  therefore,  in  bracketing  the  words.^ 

Further,  it  has  been  observed '  that  Servius  in  commenting  on  Vir- 
gil's description  of  the  volcano  in  the  \h\x6.  Aeneid,^  gives  an  admirable 
little  sketch  of  the  argument  of  our  poem,  citing  Virgil  without  ques- 
tion as  its  author;  secundum  Aetnam  Virgilii  are  his  words.  Now, 
if  it  is  true,  as  I  have  recently  suggested,^  that  Servius  took  his 

and  not  unfortunate  attempts  at  improvement;  cf.  124,  134,  137.  Nevertheless, 
interpolations  have  crept  in,  as  in  88,  148,  159. 

*  E.  Diehl,  Die  Vitae  Vergilianae  und  Ihre  antiken  Quellen  (191 1),  p.  12,  remarks 
that  the  omission  of  etiam  de  qua  ambigUur  in  G  is  due  to  the  similar  endings  {scrip- 
sit ..  .  ambigiiur) ;  if  so,  the  latter  word  was  written  with  the  symbol  for  ur  above 
the  final  t.  This  is  not  a  certain  case  of  such  error.  If,  as  I  have  assumed,  the 
original  text  was  scripsit  etiam  Aetnam,  with  de  qua  ambigitur  as  gloss,  G,  which  has 
etnam  for  aetnam,  could  readily  have  omitted  etiam  before  it. 

'  Besides  Hagen,  B.  Kruczkiewicz,  Rosprawy  i  Sprawozdania  (Univ.  of  Cracow), 
X  (1884),  147,  regards  the  clause  as  an  interpolation. 

*  See  J.  Vessereau,  Aetna  (1905),  p.  xxxii. 

*  Aen.  3,  578.    Thilo  and  Hagen,  Servius,  i,  438 

*  In  Class.  Quart.,  X  (1916),  158  ff.  I  had  arrived  at  my  results  independently  of 
Wessner,  in  the  revision  of  Teuffel's  Romische  Litteraturgeschichte  (19 13),  to  whom  I 
gave  the  credit  for  prior  discovery.  Since  then,  my  attention  was  called  by  my 
friend  and  former  colleague.  Professor  A.  S.  Pease,  to  the  fact  that  F.  Lanunert,  in 
working  on  Donatus  and  St.  Jerome,  had  come  to  the  same  conclusion  {Commenta- 
tiones  Philologicae  lenenses,  ix,i  (1912),  41  ff.);  he  had  found  Barwick's  investiga- 
tions a  good  halfway  mark  (p.  421),  just  as  I  had.  H.  Philipp,  Die  historisch-geo- 
graphischen  Quellen  in  den  Eiymologiae  des  Isidorus  von  Sevilla  (in  W.  Sieglin's 
Quellen  und  Forschungen  zur  alien  Geschichte  und  Geographic,  Heft  xxv  (191 2),  42  fif.) 
also  working  independently  and  also  taking  the  same  attitude  to  Barwick,  arrived  at 
the  same  result.    The  new  view  is  approved  and  further  corroborated  by  G.  Ho 


Young  Virgirs  Poetry  109 

comment  almost  bodily  from  Donatus,  we  may  say  that  the  latter 
no  less  than  Servius  spoke  without  qualification  of  Virgil's  Aetna  in 
his  note  on  this  passage.  The  complete  note,  in  its  opening  part, 
nms  thus:  * 

571.  ToNAT  Aetna  Ruinis  sensus  est:  partus  quidem  secures  nos 
faciebat,  deest  enim  ^quidem'  sed  Aetna  terrebat.  et  causa  huius  in- 
cendii  secundum  Aetnam  Vergilii  haec  est:  simt  terrae  desudantes 
sulpur  . . .  The  entire  note,  if  I  am  right,  belongs  to  Donatus.  Servius 
excerpted  the  most  important  part,  beginning  with  causa  huius.  Do- 
natus, therefore,  in  this  place  at  least,  refers  to  the  Aetna  as  an  un- 
doubted work  of  Virgil's. 

*  The  other  point  of  difference  between  the  two  lists  is  that  Donatus 
makes  no  mention  of  Copa.  Baehrens  did  not  hesitate  to  supply  et 
copam  between  cirim  and  et  culicem; '  in  a  critical  position  like  this, 
with  similar  syllables  both  preceding  and  following,  the  words  might 
easily  have  fallen  out  in  the  archetype  from  which  all  our  manuscripts 
are  proved  to  have  descended.  Similarly,  one  of  the  Y  manuscripts,  M, 
omitted  et  diras  item  cirim.  One  curious  reading  of  all  the  other  man- 
uscripts of  the  Y  group  seems  not  without  significance  in  the  present 
matter.  They  have  cirimus  for  cirim.  I  would  suggest  that  in  X  the 
words  et  copam,  at  first  omitted  by  the  scribe,  were  written  by  him 
in  the  margin,  with  a  reference  sign  to  them  placed  above  the  m  in 
cirim.  This  sign,  which  Z  neglected  along  with  the  marginal  addition, 
seemed  to  the  scribe  of  Y  —  or  that  of  Y^  —  to  be  the  compendium 
for  us,  a  suprascript  apostrophe,  which  various  of  the  reference- sym- 
bols common  in  early  minuscule  manuscripts  might  well  have  sug- 
gested. He  accordingly  wrote  out  the  supposed  word,  cirimus,  which 
appears  in  the  manuscripts  that  derive  from  his  copy. 

meyer,  De  Scholiis  Vergilianis  Isidori  Fontibus  (1913),  p.  84.  G.  Funaioli,  one  of  the 
foremost  experts  on  Virgilian  scholia,  refers  (in  Studi  Italiani  di  FUologia  Classica, 
xxi  (1915),  41)  to  Lammert's  conclusion  as  "  una  Use  novissima,  che  in  se  nulla 
impedisce  di  accetiare  e  per  cui  invece  tnilitano  parecchi  argotnenti."  Later  (p.  81)  he 
speaks  a  bit  more  doubtfully.  The  question  will  be  settled,  I  hope,  in  the  disserta- 
tion to  which  I  referred  in  my  article  and  which,  held  up  by  the  war,  will  not  be 
much  longer  delayed. 

^  Thilo  and  Hagen,  op.  cit.,  i,  438. 

*  Poetae  Latini  Minores,  ii  (1880),  4.    See  Sommer,  op.  cit.,  p.  18. 


no  Edward  Kennard  Rand 

Finally,  if  we  may  again  appeal  to  the  view  that  Donatus  is  the 
immediate  source  of  Servius,  the  inclusion  of  Copa  in  the  latter's  list 
makes  it  probable  that  it  existed  in  the  former. 

Another  peculiarity  of  Servius  is  that  he  is  uncertain  of  the  exact 
number  of  the  minor  poems;  ''septem  sive  octo"  he  says.  Some  schol- 
ars see  in  this  remark  an  allusion  to  the  disputed  authorship  of  the 
Aetna,^  others  to  that  of  the  Copa.  It  is  most  probable,  however,  that 
Servius  was  puzzled  by  the  title  Epigrammata.  According  to  Voll- 
mer,^  Virgil  wrote  a  collection  of  epigrammata,  which  now  is  lost. 
Other  scholars  have  with  better  reason  regarded  the  term  as  merely 
another  title  for  Catalepton,  or  better  still,  the  title  of  one  of  the  com- 
ponent parts  of  the  Catalepton.  Donatus' s  phrase  should  thus  be 
punctuated,  "  deinde  catalepton  {et  priapeia  et  epigrammata)."  This 
is  accurate  enough  description  of  the  poems  in  the  Catalepton  outside 
the  Priapea;  indeed  one  of  them,  (4,  9)  is  cited  by  the  grammarian 
Marius  Victorinus'  as  Vergilius  iambico  epigrammate.  Quintihan, 
after  quoting  Catalepton  2,  adds:  Nee  minus  noto  Sallustius  epigram- 
mate  incessitur,  from  which  it  is  reasonable  to  infer  that  Quintihan 
thought  of  the  poem  from  the  Catalepton  also  as  an  epigram.*  Do- 
natus, therefore,  makes  a  correct  statement,  which  we  need  only  to 
punctuate  to  understand.  Servius,  not  understanding,  and  rearrang- 
ing the  titles  in  the  wrong  order,  foimd  eight,  with  two  of  them,  Cata- 
lepton and  Epigrammata,  fitting  the  same  collection  of  short  poems. 
He  evidently  concluded  that  either  these  were  alternative  titles  (there 
being  seven  works  in  all)  or  one  of  the  works  was  lost  (there  being 
eight  in  all). 

We  may  be  reasonably  sure,  therefore,  that  in  Suetonius's  time 
there  was  current  a  collection  of  six  minor  poems  ascribed  to  Virgil  — 
Culex,  Ciris,  Copa,  Aetna,  Dirae,  Catalepton  {Priapea  and  Epigram- 
mata). In  the  case  of  Culex,  Copa,  and  some  of  the  pieces  of  Catalep- 
ton, there  is  other  external  testimony  in  the  shape  of  citations  in 
Martial,  Lucan,  Statins,  and  other  writers  of  the  empire.^    The  Vir- 

^  For  a  r6sum6  of  opinions  see  de  Gubematis  in  Rivista  difilologia  e  di  istruzione, 
sxxviii  (1910),  205.    To  this  add  Sommer's  remarks,  op.  cit.  p.  19. 
'  See  Sitzungsherichte,  etc.  (1907),  p.  340. 
*  Gratnmatici  Latini,  6,  137  (K). 
«  Inst.  Or.  8,  3,  29.  *  Teuffel,  op.  cit.,  §  230,  i,  4, 


Young  Virgil's  Poetry  iii 

gilian  authorship  is  further  attested  by  the  manuscripts  of  all  the 
poems  on  the  list.  The  titles  Priapea  and  Epigrammata  do  not  appear, 
but  the  title  Catakpton  precedes  the  Priapea  as  it  naturally  would  if 
meant  to  include  both  it  and  the  epigrams.^  Not  all  the  poems  have 
come  down  by  the  same  line  of  tradition.  The  text  is  sadly  corrupted 
in  many  places,  especially  in  Ciris  and  Aetna.  But  the  facts  of  the 
manuscript  tradition,  so  Vollmer,  who  of  all  men  has  studied  it  most 
thoroughly ,2  declares,  point  to  the  existence  of  an  ancient  codex  of 
Virgil,  in  which  Bucolics,  Georgics,  and  Aeneid  were  preceded  by  the 
six  minor  poems;  Aetna  was  among  them,  whether  or  not  it  was  desig- 
nated as  doubtful.  A  few  works  of  other  poets  were  also  included, 
not  necessarily  because  the  compiler  ascribed  them  to  Virgil,  but  be- 
cause he  found  their  contents  appropriate.  Thus  Lydia  was  added  to 
Dirae  inasmuch  as  the  name  of  the  shepherdess  is  the  same;  the  More- 
turn  gives  a  description  of  country-life  somewhat  like  that  in  the 
Georgics;  the  Elegiae  in  Maecenaiem  commemorate  Virgil's  great  pa- 
tron. In  the  course  of  time,  scribes  naturally  put  Virgilian  titles  on  all 
these  works.  Thus  a  manuscript,  now  lost,  but  mentioned  in  a  cata- 
logue of  the  books  at  Murbach  compiled  c.  850,  formed  one  of  four 
volumes,  the  others  containing  Bucolics,  Georgics,  and  Aeneid,  while  it 
included  Dirae,  Culex,  Aetna,  Copa,  Maecenas,  CiriSy  Catalepton, 
Priapea  and  Moretum?  Other  spurious  affairs  then  gathered  about  the 
collection,  particularly  the  poems  De  Viro  Bono,  Est  et  Non  and  De 
Rosis  Nascentibus,  of  which  the  first  two  certainly  and  the  third  prob- 
ably were  written  by  Ausonius  in  the  fourth  century.*    Mediaeval 

'  Vollmer  has  to  support  his  theory  by  arbitrarily  assuming,  as  Ellis  in  his  edi- 
tion also  does,  that  the  title  Catalepton,  originally  standing  before  the  second  part 
of  the  collection,  "casu  migravit  ante  Priapea."  See  his  edition,  pp.  127,  130.  Brit, 
Jugendverse  und  Heimnipoesie  Vergils  (1910),  pp.  2  fif.,  has  an  excellent  discussion 
of  this  matter.  So  Sommer,  op.  cit.,  p.  34  f .  He  well  disposes  of  Leo's  view  that 
the  Epigrammata  are  the  miscellaneous  verselets  quoted  and  attributed  to  Virgil 
in  the  enlarged  form  of  the  Vita  .  .  .  Nocte  pluU  tola,  etc.  (Riese,  Anthol.  Lat.  Nos. 
256-263). 

^  For  a  summary  statement,  see  his  edition,  pp.  3  f.  See  also  below,  p.  155. 

'  Ibid.,  p.  4.  H.  Bloch,  Strassburger  Festschrift  zur  46en  Versammlung  der  Philo- 
logen  und  Schtdmdnner  (1901),  257  ff. 

*  Teuffel,  op.  cit.,  §  229,2.  The  latest  addition  to  this  list  is  an  epitaph  of  four 
verses  on  Julius  Caesar,  published  by  Hieronjonus  Geist  from  a  Cambrai  manu- 
script in  Berliner  Philohgische  Wochenscrift  (1914),  1107. 


112  Edward  Kennard  Rand 

anthologies  exist,  with  extracts  from  various  of  the  poems,  and  a  special 
collection  was  made  in  Carolingian  —  or  pre-Carolingian  —  times, 
containing  Culex,  Dirae,  Lydia,  Copa,  De  Est  et  Non,  De  Institutione 
Viri  Boni,  De  Rosis  Nascentibus,  and  Moretum.  According  to  Voll- 
mer,^  the  title  preceding  it,  P.  Virgilii  luvenalis  Ludi  Libdlus,  pertains 
rather  to  the  Culex  than  to  the  whole  collection.  He  thinks  that  a 
monk  of  Fnlda  may  have  been  the  editor.  We  should  also,  I  beUeve, 
consider  the  possibility  of  an  earUer  origin  in  England  or  Ireland. 

The  starting-point  for  the  higher  criticism  of  the  Minor  Poems 
should  be  the  ancient  list  transmitted  in  Suetonius's  biography  of 
Virgil  and  backed  up  by  statements  of  ancient  authors  and  by  the 
testimony  of  the  manuscripts.    This  testimony,  naturally,  is  not  so 
strong  as  it  is  for  Virgil's  mature  works.  Bucolics,  Georgics,  and  Aeneidy 
which  formed  one  of  the  staples  of  education  in  the  later  empire.   But 
the  line  of  tradition  of  the  Minor  Poems  is  quite  as  bright  as  is  that  of 
Catullus  or  of  TibuUus  or  of  Propertius.  Instead,  then,  of  creating  from 
Bucolics,  Georgics,  and  Aeneid  a  definition  of  what  Virgil  at  all  times 
must  have  been,  and  by  that  definition  excluding  the  minor  poems  as 
unworthy  of  him,  we  should  accept  the  ancient  statement  and  in  the 
light  of  it  enlarge  our  imderstanding  of  Virgilian  quaUties,  thankful 
for  the  opportimity  of  seeing  his  genius  mount  from  stage  to  stage. 
This,  at  any  rate,  is  my  mode  of  approach,  and  had  been,  I  may  say, 
even  before  the  appearance  of  Skutsch's  article.^     In  the  present 
paper,  I  shall  not  reckon  much  with  minute  analyses  of  Virgil's  style 
and  metre,  though  I  shall  not  consciously  neglect  any  recent  article 
that  offers  apparent  evidence  against  the  genuineness  of  the  Minor 
Poems.    Such  studies  are  useful,  nay  indispensable;   but  they  must 
be  used  with  exceeding  caution  in  determining  questions  of  author- 
ship.   Works  of  short  compass  that  by  hypothesis  come  from  the 
unformed  period  of  youth  when  the  poet  was  consciously  assuming  dif- 
ferent attitudes  and  cultivating  different  styles  ought  not  always  to 

1  P.  L.  M.  i,  p.  13. 

2  At  that  time,  it  seemed  to  me  that  Culex.  Copa  and  most  of  the  Catakpton  were 
Virgil's.  Vollmer's  articles  induced  me  to  add  Ciris,  Dirae,  without  the  Lydia,  and 
the  rest  of  the  Catahpton.  On  subsequent  reflection,  I  could  find  no  valid  argu- 
ment against  admitting  Aetna.  I  doubt  not  that  many  a  scholar  has  gone  through 
a  similar  experience.  1 


Young  VirgiVs  Poetry  113 

conform  to  habits  later  established.^  Some  similarity  we  have  a  right 
to  demand,  but  the  presence  of  diversities  is  no  certain  proof  of  spuri- 
ousness.  At  what  point  the  element  of  diversity  becomes  a  decid- 
ing factor  is  a  difficult  matter  to  determine.  My  method  is  frankly 
deductive.  Accepting  the  ancient  testimony  as  true,  and  throwing  on 
the  adversary  the  burden  of  proof,  I  seek  to  interpret  in  a  general  and 
cursory  way,  the  significance  of  the  minor  poems  in  what  I  take  to  be 
their  chronological  sequence.  Unless  we  arrive  at  results  against 
which  good  taste  and  common  sense  —  our  ultimate  court  of  appeal 
—  instinctively  rebel,  we  may  regard  the  external  testimony  as  fur- 
ther supported  by  the  contents  of  the  poems.  Once  more,  this  attitude 
is  nothing  new.  It  was  taken  long  before  the  present  controversy  by 
one  of  the  most  competent  critics  of  the  period  of  Latin  literature  into 
which  Virgil  was  born,  August  Ferdinand  Naeke.*  And  though  Naeke 
is  led  to  divergent  results,  his  starting-point  is  that  of  Schrader. 

II 

Two  of  Virgil's  poems  are  school-boy  afifairs.  One  is  an  epigram,  in 
the  form  of  an  epitaph,  on  the  robber  BaUista,  the  keeper  of  a  school, 
presumably  of  gladiators,  whom  his  pupils  stoned  to  death. 

Monte  sub  hoc  lapidum  tegitur  Ballista  sepultus; 
nocte  die  tutum  carpe  viator  iter. 

This  distich  offers  the  higher  critic  small  matter  for  argimient.  Virgil's 
reputation  is  not  damaged  if  we  accept  the  verses  as  genuine. 

^  I  agree  thoroughly  with  de  Gubematis,  loc.  cit.  (above,  p.  no),  p.  220:  Prima 
di  dichiarare  apocrifi  car  mi  come  Ciri,  Copa,  Catalepton  (Epigrammata),  Dirae, 
Moretum,  un  fdologo  deve  portare  ragioni  sicure  e  convincenti  e  non  basarsi  su  imf 
pressioni  soggeUive  o  statistiche  grammaticali  e  melriche  interpretate  arbUrariamente. 

*  Carmina  Valerii  Catonis.  Cum  Augusti  Ferdinandi  Naekii  Annotationibus. 
Accedunt  eiusdem  Naekii  .  .  .  Dissertationes  IV.  Cura  Ludovici  Schopeni.  Bonnae 
1847,  P-  221:  Virgilium  praeter  tria  opera  maiora  .  .  .  alia  scripsisse,  minora,  tam 
per  se  probabile  est,  ut  nihil  ei,  qui  ita  factum  esse  contenderit,  sed  contrarium  ei, 
qui  factum  esse  neget,  probandum  sit.  .  .  .  Inter  minora  carmina,  quae  tribuuntur 
Vergilio,  unum  et  alterum  tam  bona  auctoritate  tribuuntur,  et  ab  idoneis  testibus 
comprobantur,  ut  etiam  alia,  cum  illis  edi  solita,  nisi  per  se  Virgilio  sint  indigna, 
pro  VirgUianis  haberi  possint.  Naeke's  ideas  on  the  minor  poems  in  general  and 
Dirae  in  particular  had  taken  shape  at  least  as  early  as  1828.  See  Schopen's 
preface,  p.  v. 


1 14  Edward  Kennard  Rand 

The  other  school-boy  poem  is 

CULEX 

The  ascription  of  Culex  to  Virgil  occurs  in  manuscripts  as  early  as 
the  ninth  century,^  and  the  existence  of  a  poem  called  Culex  and  at- 
tributed to  Virgil  is  attested  by  Lucan,  Statins,  and  Martial  in  the 
first  century  and  by  the  grammarian  Nonius  Marcellus,  who  is  using 
some  earher  authority,  in  the  fourth.^  Indeed,  there  is  ground  for 
believing  that  Ovid,  who  apparently  imitates  the  poem  preserved  to 
us,  regarded  it  as  Virgil's.'  In  recent  years,  the  tendency  to  accept 
the  genuineness  of  the  present  poem  has  gathered  strength.*    Accord- 

^  One  of  the  certain  proofs  that  all  the  manuscripts  of  Culex  descend  from  a 
common  ancestor  is  conspicuous  in  v.  27,  where  the  scribe  of  the  ancient  codex, 
after  writing  ponitque,  carelessly  caught  at  namque  in  the  line  above,  and  finished 
with  the  rest  of  that  line,  which  he  had  just  written,  instead  of  giving  us  the  last 
half  of  V.  27;  hence  the  lacuna  in  all  the  MSS. 

*  Teuffel,  op.  cit.,  §  230,  i. 

'  See  C.  Pl^sent,  Le  Culex.  &tude  sur  VAlexandrinisme  latin.  (1910),  pp.  33, 
119  ff. 

*  It  is  accepted,  e.  g.,  by  VoUmer  in  the  work  mentioned  above,  p.  2,  also  by 
J.  G.  Phillimore,  Class.  Phil,  v  (1910),  418  ff.;  E.  S.  Jackson,  Class.  Quarterly,  v 
(1911),  163  ff.;  G.  D.  Butcher, /6«/.,  viii  (1914),  128  ff.;  R.  S.  Conway,  in  The 
Bulletin  of  the  John  Rylands  Library  (1915),  pp.  4,  11.  J.  W.  Mackail,  who  in  his 
Latin  Literature  (1895),  p.  104,  said  that  the  Culex  is  the  work  of  a  clever  imitator  of 
Virgil,  now  {Lectures  on  Poetry,  pp.  68  ff .)  declares  that  Virgil  wrote  it  in  the  period  of 
his  Georgics,  though  it  lacks  the  finishing  touches,  —  I  fear  that  our  present  poem 
needs  more  than  finishing  touches  to  transform  it  to  the  art  of  the  Georgics.  The 
Culex,  if  Virgil's,  was  written  at  an  earlier  stage.  Schrader,  op.  cit.,  p.  16  ff.,  and 
Naeke,  op.  cit.,  pp.  227  ff.,  present  good  reasons  for  accepting  the  work  as  genuine. 
The  latter  quotes  remarks  in  the  same  vein  by  Johannes  Andreas  de  Buxis,  the 
editor  of  the  prince ps  in  1469. 

On  the  other  side,  the  most  important  discussions  that  I  have  seen  are:  C. 
Plesent,  op.  cit.;  also  Le  Culex.  Poeme  pseudo^Virgilien.  Ed.  critique  et  explicative, 
Paris,  1910.  P16sent  believes  that  Virgil  wrote  a  poem  on  the  same  subject  as  that 
of  our  poem,  that  it  was  lost  and  the  present  affair  forged  ("  une  falsification  prS- 
meditie,"  p.  37  of  the  latter  work)  and  substituted  in  the  corpus  of  Virgil's  works 
before  the  time  of  Ovid;  the  date  of  the  poem  on  this  theory  is  c.  19  B.C.  Needless 
to  say,  the  assumption  of  "falsifications  prSmeditees  "  is  not  the  most  commendable 
method  of  solving  literary  problems. 

Birt,  in  his  Jugendverse  und  Heimatpoesie  Vergils  (Erklctrung  des  Catalepton),  p.  9, 
declares  against  the  genuineness  of  the  poem  on  metrical  and  stylistic  groimds  and 
because  of  its  "  general  silliness."    One  of  Birt's  pupils  pronoimced  on  the  metre 


Young  Virgil's  Poetry  115 

ing  to  the  ancient  biographer,  Culex  is  the  work  of  a  boy  of  sixteen; 
we  do  not  need  with  Scahger  and  some  modern  scholars  to  change 
"  sixteen  "  to  "  twenty-six,"  just  because  Statius  extravagantly  com- 
pliments Lucan,  who  died  at  twenty-six,  for  achieving  great  things 
in  poetry  "  before  the  age  of  Virgil's  Cidex."  ^ 

The  poet  dedicates  his  work  to  a  certain  Octavius,'  whom  we  shall 
perhaps  meet  in  later  poems,  and  apologizes  for  offering  him  a  jeu 
d'esprit;  there  will  come  a  time  when  he  will  write  of  his  friend  in  a 
loftier  strain.    This  prophetic  note,  with  its  commingling  of  modesty 

(O.  Braum,  De  monosyllabis  ante  caes.,  Marburg,  1906)  and  another  on  the  style 
(W.  Holtschmidt,  De  Culicis  Carminis  Sermone  et  de  Tempore  quo  scriptum  sit, 
Marburg,  1913). 

^  The  "  emendation  "  is  accepted  by  Teuffel,  op.  cit.,  §  230,  i,  and  by  Brummer 
in  his  text  of  the  Vita.  I  will  not  deny  that  the  archetype  of  all  the  manuscripts 
might  have  contained  the  easy  error  of  XVI  for  XXVI;  similar  errors  are  com- 
mitted by  M  {XVII)  and  Z  {XV).  But  the  supF>osition  is  unnecessary,  and  is 
dealt  a  coup  de  grace  by  W.  B.  Anderson  in  Class.  Quarterly,  x  (1916),  225  fif.  An- 
derson interprets  the  words  of  Statius  {Silvae,  2,  7,  74)  to  mean:  "  Thou  shalt  be 
singing  of  these  themes  (the  events  of  the  Civil  War)  even  at  the  dawn  of  thy 
young  manhood,  before  the  age  at  which  Maro  wrote  the  Culex."  He  adds;  "  It 
is  possible  that  the  Wunderkind  composed  some  parts  of  the  poem  about  the  age 
of  fifteen,  and  it  is  possible  also  that  when  he  made  the  famous  reference  to  the 
Culex  he  believed  that  Virgil  had  written  that  work  at  the  age  of  sixteen." 

*  I  cannot  believe  that  the  Octavius  addressed  is  the  later  Octavianus  Caiesar. 
There  is  no  external  evidence  that  Virgil  and  Octavius  were  acquainted  at  the 
time.  However,  various  scholars  identify  Octavius  of  the  poem  with  the  later 
Octavian.  So  Skutsch  (who  cannot  quite  ascribe  the  poem  to  Virgil),  Aus  Vergils 
Frilhzeit,  131  ff.;  Vollmer,  Sitzungsberichte,  etc.  (1907),  351.  Ward  Fowler  {Classical 
Review,  xxviii  (1914),  119)  is  further  disposed  to  believe  that  the  lads  met  in  the 
year  50  when  Julius  Caesar  was  in  Cisalpine  Gaul,  and  that  the  dedication  to  the 
poem  was  composed  in  this  year.  Conway,  The  Youth  of  Virgil  (1915),  20  ff.,  en- 
thusiastically seconding  this  suggestion,  paints  a  pretty  picture  of  "  the  big  boy 
Virgil  taking  the  little  boy  Octavius  round  the  Mantuan  farm."  Now  there  is  no 
evidence  whatever  either  that  Octavius  joined  his  imcle  Caesar  in  50,  or  that  Virgil's 
father  was  in  a  position  to  invite  the  nephew  of  the  great  general  to  his  house.  If  we 
suppose,  as  we  are  bound  to  do  until  other  evidence  appears,  that  the  dedication 
is  of  a  piece  with  the  rest  of  the  poem,  it  was  written,  according  to  the  statement 
of  the  ancient  biographer,  in  54  B.C.  But  there  is  no  likelihood  that  yoimg  Octa- 
vius, aged  nine,  joined  Caesar  near  Mantua  in  that  year.  After  the  second  invasion 
of  Britain,  Caesar  was  kept  the  entire  time  in  Transalpine  Gaul,  owing  to  uprisings 
among  the  tribes.  Those  who  regard  the  Culex  as  a  forgery  can  readily  say  that 
its  author,  writing  vmder  the  spell  of  Virgil's  later  works  and  the  later  career  of 


Ii6  Edward  Kennard  Rand 

and  confidence,  is  familiar  to  readers  of  Virgil;  it  appears  again  at  the 
beginning  of  the  eighth  Eclogue  and  the  third  Georgic.  Octavius  is 
still  very  youthful,  though  his  youth  inspires  respect;  "  worshipful 
Octavius,"  "  holy  lad,"  the  poet  calls  him.  Phoebus  and  Pales,  pas- 
toral deities,  are  invoked,  for  though  the  spirit  of  the  little  poem  is 
mock-epic,  its  contents  are  largely  pastoral.  The  verse  shall  not  tell 
of  gods  and  giants  or  battles  of  Persians  and  Greeks.  Like  Virgil  in 
the  Georgics,  our  author  turns  from  high  themes  to  something  nearer 
at  hand.^  He  will  tell  the  story  of  shepherd  who  drives  his  flocks 
afield  at  dawn  and  while  the  goats  are  cropping  the  grass,  hanging 
from  cUffs  and  selecting,  with  a  certain  Epicurean  discrimination,  the 
younger  and  tenderer  bramble-shoots,  soliloquizes,  in  a  fashion  recall- 
ing the  second  Georgic,  on  the  pleasures  of  rural  simphcity.  At  noon 
he  retires  with  his  herd  to  the  shelter  of  a  grove  —  some  little  grove 
about  Mantua,  which  nevertheless  is  the  home  of  the  rustic  gods  and 
as  awesome  as  the  abode  of  Diana  herself.  The  youthful,  Uke  the 
mature,  Virgil,  saw  sacred  presences  in  common  scenes. 

Fortunatus  et  ille  decs  qui  novit  agrestes 

Panaque  Silvanumque  senem  Nymphasque  sorores.^ 

The  grove  was  full  of  goodly  trees;  there  were  plane  and  lotus,  alder 
and  almond,  oak,  pine,  cypress,  beech,  poplar,  with  clinging  vines  of 
ivy  and  myrtle.  The  songs  of  birds,  mingUng  with  the  plashing  of  a 
little  stream,  made  agreeable  music  for  those  who  bathed  in  its  waters. 
This  is  purely  VirgiHan  scenery,  not  painted  from  life,  with  regard  for 
the  appropriate  fauna  and  flora,  but  including,  besides  real  details, 
literary  reminiscence  and  anything  that  the  poet  can  use  in  creating 
an  Arcadian  fairyland.  The  incongruous  elements  are  combined  in 
the  Eclogues  by  the  magic  of  illusion  into  a  pleasant  harmony.  Here 
they  lack  the  touch  of  magic  and  remain  extravagant.  With  the  men- 
Augustus,  betrays  himself  by  a  clumsy  anachronism.  We  are  driven,  I  believe, 
to  this  alternative:  either  the  poem  is  a  forgery,  or  the  Octavius  mentioned  is  not 
Octavianus  Caesar.  There  are  three  contemporary  Octavii  —  or  possibly,  three 
different  references  to  the  same  Octavius.  For  a  discussion  of  these  passages,  see 
below,  pp.  136  ff. 

^  Cf .  Georg.  3  init.  On  this  t&k<k  of  Greek  and  Latin  verse,  apparently  of  Alexan- 
drian origin,  see  Jackson,  MoUe  Atqm  Facetum  in  H.  S.  C.  P.,  xxv  (1914),  123. 

«  Georg.  2,  493  f.,  and  3,  331-334. 


Young  Virgil's  Poetry  117 

tion  of  each  tree,  the  story  of  its  metamorphosis  is  intruded,  much 
more  to  the  poet's  than  the  reader's  delight.  Perhaps  the  effect  is 
intentionally  somnolent.  The  shepherd,  at  any  rate,  goes  to  sleep. 
While  he  is  enjoying  his  siesta,  a  huge  spotted  snake,  whom  readers 
of  the  Georgics  and  the  Aeneid  well  know,^  glides  up  and,  angry  that 
his  wonted  bed  is  preoccupied,  is  about  to  make  trouble  for  the  in- 
truder, when  a  Uttle  gnat  wakes  the  shepherd  by  stinging  him  on  the 
forehead.  The  shepherd,  starting  in  pain,  slays  his  benefactor.  Then, 
seeing  the  greater  peril,  still  drowsy  and  not  so  frightened  as  he  nor- 
mally would  have  been,  he  tears  a  bough  from  the  tree  and  crushes  the 
serpent.  That  night  the  gnat  comes  to  the  shepherd  in  a  vision,  even 
as  Patroclus  appears  to  Achilles  in  the  Iliad,^  and  tells,  at  wearisome 
length,  the  story  of  his  adventures  in  the  world  below.  Next  morn- 
ing, the  shepherd,  touched  with  pity,  builds  a  burial-mound  for  his 
httle  friend,  heaps  it  with  enough  flowers  to  fill  a  seedman's  catalogue 
and  carves  an  epitaph: 

Parve  culex  pecudum  custos  tibi  tale  merenti 
funeris  offidum  vitae  pro  mimere  reddit. 

For  a  lad  of  sixteen,  our  poet  has  scored  a  success,  not  to  say  a  tri- 
umph.^ He  has  written  an  epyUion  of  the  heroic  rather  than  the  ro- 
mantic t)^,*  in  which  diverse  elements  are  blended.    The  exalted 

^  E.  g.,  Aen.  5,  84  ff.  and  especially  Georg.  3,  426  ff.,  where  a  shepherd  is  enjoined 
to  slay  a  snake  in  the  fashion  described  In  the  Culex.  On  the  differences  between 
the  description  in  the  Culex  and  those  in  the  later  poems,  and  on  the  Greek  models, 
see  Leo's  note  in  his  edition,  pp.  56  ff.  C.  P16sent,  Le  Culex,  &tude,  etc.,  gives  an 
even  fuller  treatment  (pp.  97  ff.).  He  well  remarks  (p.  100):  U  setnble  d'ailleurs 
que  le  morceau  du  Culex  ait  fail  icole  d  son  tour.  Ovide,  Stace,  Claudien  en  reproduisent 
de  nombreus  traits.  Special  attention,  I  think,  should  be  called  to  the  very  close 
connection  between  Ovid,  Met.  3,  32  ff.  and  the  present  passage.  The  outline  and 
many  of  the  details  (e.  g.,  cf.  v.  167  with  Met.  3,  41  ff.)  closely  correspond;  but  Ovid 
has  transformed  raw  material  into  orderly  and  brilliant  art. 

*  23,  62  ff. 

*  Leo,  who  declares  that  he  was  attracted  to  the  task  of  editing  the  poem,  not 
by  its  beauties  but  by  its  difficulties  (see  his  edition,  1891,  p.  21),  has  to  admit 
that  the  design  of  the  poem  is  "lepidum"  (p.  17),  and  can  compliment  an  indi- 
vidual verse  (p.  37),  or  a  description  (p.  36). 

*  See  Jackson's  excellent  treatment  of  this  theme  in  The  Latin  EpyUion,  H.  S.  C. 
P.,  xxiv  (1913),  40  f. 


ii8  Edward  Kennard  Rand 

treatment  of  humble  actors  and  a  humble  theme  —  angustis  addere 
rebus  honorem  —  ^  is  an  essentially  Virgilian  undertaking.  Pursuing 
this  aim  in  all  seriousness,  Virgil  later  raised  the  pastoral  to  epic,  creat- 
ing a  new  literary  species.  He  followed  Lucretius  in  similarly  trans- 
forming didactic  poetry,  though  taking  in  the  Georgics  a  subject  less 
epic  in  character  than  that  of  the  DeRerumNatur a.  The  same  endeavor 
treated  playfully  results  in  mock-heroic,  as  in  the  Battle  of  the  Bees  ^ 
and  in  the  Culex.  There  are  youthful  infelicities,  prolixities  and  lame 
verses  in  the  present  poem,  —  Culicem  fl  ever  at  ore  rttdi,  observes 
Martial  — ^  but  the  little  parody  is  cleverly  managed  and  has  pleas- 
ant touches  of  humor,  good  observation,  and  a  genuine,  if  immature, 
feeling  for  nature.  The  work  is  just  what  a  country-boy  with  the 
spark  of  genius  and  a  passion  for  reading  might  have  written. 

The  lad  is  well-read.  He  knows  his  Homer,  both  the  Iliad  and  the 
Odyssey,^  and  his  Hesiod;  in  the  latter  he  discerns,  with  no  little 
penetration,  not  a  weary  pessimist,  such  as  Hesiod  is  sometimes  por- 
trayed, but  a  tranquil  sage  who  has  caught  the  secret  of  simple  de- 
lights.^ He  has  also  dipped  into  Greek  tragedy  and  meditated  on  the 
divine  vengeance  that  smites  down  human  pride,^  and  on  the  tragic 
interplay  of  fate  and  human  wills.  Fate  brought  about  Eurydice's 
doom,  and  yet  Orpheus  deserved  a  share,  perhaps  the  larger  share,  of 
the  blame: 

Sed  tu  crudelis,  crudelis  tu  magis  Orpheu.^ 

Young  Virgil  may  have  known,  besides,  Alexandrian  poems  on  love 
and  metamorphosis  and  journeys  to  the  lower  world.  It  is  interesting 
to  compare  the  Inferno  here  with  that  in  the  sixth  Aeneid;  none  of  the 
special  inventions  of  that  artful  account,  in  which  the  theological 

^  Georg.  3,  290.  ^  /j/^.^  4^  66  flF.  '  8,  56,  20. 

*  See  304  fif.  for  the  Iliad  and  328  ff.  for  the  Odyssey. 

'  V.  96:  aemulus  Ascraeo  pastor  sibi  quisque  poetae  |  securam  placido  traducit 
pectore  vitam.  See  the  writer's  Horatian  Urbanity  in  Hesiod's  Works  and  Days  in 
A.  J.  P.,  xxxii  (191 1),  165. 

'  V.  339:  ilia  vices  hominum  testata  est  copia  quondam,  |  ne  quisquam  propriae 
fortimae  munere  dives  |  iret  inevectus  caeliun  super:  omne  propinquo  frangitur 
invidiae  telo  decus. 

^  V.  292.  Cf.  Ed.  8,  48:  crudelis  tu  quoque,  mater:  |  crudelis  mater  magis, 
an  puer  improbus  ille?  |  improbus  ille  puer;  crudelis  tu  quoque,  mater.  Ciris  133: 
sed  malus  ille  puer,  quem  nee  sua  flectere  mater  |  iratum  potuit.  Aen.  4,  412: 
improbe  Amor,  quid  non  mortalia  pectora  cogis ! 


Young  Virgil's  Poetry  119 

features  are  necessitated  by  the  dramatic  setting,^  appear  in  the  story 
of  the  gnat,  who  wanders  about  in  the  aimless  fashion  of  a  tourist. 
Surely  an  imitator  writing  after  the  Aeneid  could  not  have  been  thus 
unafifected  by  Virgil's  later  plan.*  Another  Alexandrian  earmark  is 
the  pastoral  element,  which  is  not,  however,  drawn  from  Theocritus.' 
It  has  been  suggested  *  that  the  whole  affair  is  nothing  but  a  transla- 
tion of  some  lost  Greek  work.  I  prefer  to  give  Virgil  the  benefit  of  the 
doubt;  John  Stuart  Mill  had  read  at  least  an  equal  bulk  of  Greek 
literature  at  half  the  age.  Besides,  no  Greek  speaks  so  distinctly  in 
this  poem  as  does  Virgil's  own  countryman  and  most  immediate 
master,  Lucretius,  whose  poem  had  appeared  not  long  before.  The 
pastoral  passages  in  the  De  Rerunt  Natura  and  its  splendid  bursts  of 
moral  satire,  in  which  senseless  human  conventions  are  matched  with 
the  quiet  joys  of  nature,  explain  the  serious  part  of  the  Culex,  supply 
some  of  its  phrases  and  excuse,  in  part,  its  tautologies  and  crudities  of 
construction,  Catullus  is  not  so  much  in  evidence.  Perhaps  the 
latter's  poems  had  not  yet  been  widely  circulated;  or  perhaps  the 
lad  had  not  read  them  deeply.' 

Among  the  rhetorical  crudities  obvious  in  the  poem  are  the  excessive 
or  awkward  use  of  the  parenthesis  •  and  of  anaphora '  —  devices  of 

*  Ellis  introduces  a  bit  of  the  Infemo  of  the  Aeneid  by  reading  (v.  233)  quern 
(i.  e,,  the  gnat)  circa  Iristes  densetUur  in  ostia  Poenae  (for  in  omnia  poenae).  The 
gnat  mentions  no  limbo  or  mourning  fields,  and,  unless  Ellis  is  right,  no  clustering 
Abstractions  about  the  gates  of  Hell.  The  legend  of  good  women  (v.  260)  suggests 
the  campi  lugentes  without  the  setting  given  to  them  in  the  Aeneid.  The  "  Lake 
of  Dis  "  is  a  novelty,  unless  locus  is  merely  a  misnomer  for  the  rivers  of  the  under- 
world. 

*  Leo  is  so  much  impressed  by  the  differences  between  the  two  accounts  that 
he  declares  {op.  cit.,  p.  89):  nisi  singula  quaedam  imitator  em  proderent,  dubitari 
posset  num  huius  carminis  auctor  Vergilianum  novisset.  This  state  of  affairs  would 
be  curious  in  a  forgery;  it  is  natural  enough  in  a  genuine  and  early  work. 

*  See  P16sent,  Le  Culex,  6tude,  etc.,  p.  266:  "  II  ne  se  trouve  pas  un  seul  em- 
pnmt  av6r6  k  Theocrite  ni  aux  autres  pontes  de  son  6cole." 

*  See  Teuffel,  op.  cit.,  §  230,  i. 

'  As  examples  of  possible  reminiscences  cf.  v.  245  and  Cat.  63,  12  (see  below, 
note  7);  vv.  413  f.:  tibi  tale  merenti  funeris  officium  vitae  pro  munere  reddit  and 
Cat.  64,  157:  lalia  qui  reddis  pro  dulci  praemia  vita. 

*  There  are  about  ten  in  the  poem.  Awkward  are  those  in  136,  139,  and  espe- 
cially awkward,  if  VoUmer's  punctuation  is  right,  is  that  in  170-174. 

^  There  are  some  twenty-four  prominent  cases.    Among  them  should  be  reck- 


120  Edward  Kennard  Rand 

which  Virgil  was  also  fond  later,  but  which  he  employed  with  greater 
art  and  greater  reserve.^  Prolixity  and  tautology  are  far  too  frequent, 
though  Lucretius  could  give  the  young  poet  authority  enough  for 
these  defects.^  A  flagrant  example  of  both  vices  occurs  at  the  end  of 
the  poem.  All  that  the  poet  has  to  say  is  that  the  shepherd,  not  for- 
getting his  duty  to  the  gnat,  raised  a  circular  hill  of  earth  and  covered 
it  with  a  smooth  marble  stone.    What  he  says  is: ' 

lam  memor  inceptimi  peragens  sibi  cura  laborem 
congestum  cumulavit  opus  atque  aggere  multo 
telluris  tumulus  formatum  crevit  in  orbem. 
quem  circum  lapidem  levi  de  marmore  formans 
conserit,  assiduae  curae  memor. 

This  is  a  kind  of  vicious  circle  of  redundancy,  ending  where  it  began.* 
For  prolixity,  the  description  inunediately  following  could  hardly  be 
excelled.  Here  we  find  eighteen  varieties  of  flowers  that  the  shepherd 
has  heaped  on  the  tomb  of  the  gnat.  As  in  a  Roman  prayer,  which 
avoids  the  possible  neglect  of  some  unknown  god,  an  omnibus  clause 
is  added  to  include  all  the  remaining  flowers  of  spring.  There  is  no 
attempt  to  diversify  the  description  by  arranging  separate  nosegays. 

oned  245 :  fsiblite  puellae,  |  ite,  quibus  taedas  accendit  tristis  Erinys.  Whatever 
the  text,  the  anaphora  ite  .  .  .  ite  (cf.  Ed.  i,  71;  7,  44;  10,  77,  etc.)  is  certain.  Edi- 
tors have  curiously  avoided  Voss's  conjecture,  simul  ite.  It  is  adopted  by  Wet- 
more,  in  his  excellent  Index  Verborum  Vergilianus,  191 1,  and  supported  by  Catullus 
63,  12:  Agite  ite  ad  alta,  Gallae,  Cybeles  nemora  simul  \  simul  ite,  Dindimenae 
dominae  vaga  pecora.  The  situation  is  virtually  identical  —  the  calling  of  a  wild 
troupe  to  action.  Simul  ite  is  intensely  emotional  here  as  elsewhere  in  Catullus's 
poem  (w.  19,  27, 31).  The  present  passage,  therefore,  aflfords  another  proof  that  all 
the  manuscripts  of  the  Culex  derived  in  the  early  Middle  Ages  from  one  ancestor; 
the  curious  nature  of  the  mistake  here  suggests  an  ancient  or  a  peculiar  script,  or 
possibly  an  error  of  hearing,  due  to  dictation  to  an  amanuensis. 

Lucretius  contains  splendid  examples  of  anaphora,  e.  g.,  5,  949:  imiori'  fluenta  | 
lubrica  proluvie  larga  lavere  umida  saxa,  |  umida  saxa,  super  viridi  stillantia  musco. 
Anaphora  is  also  frequent  in  Catulus;  e.  g.,  64,  19-21. 

^  There  is  at  least  one  parenthesis  in  every  Eclogue  except  the  first. 

*  See  Mimro's  index,  s.v.  "  Tautology,"  though  this  is  only  a  partial  list.  3,  294  f.: 
illis  quibus  acria  corda  \  iracundaque  mens  facile  efervescit  in  ira  may  serve  as 
example. 

»  V.394ff- 

*  Still,  Virgil's  iacentem  .  .  .  iacebant  at  the  end  of  w.  14  and  16  in  Ed.  6  is  not 
much  better  than  formatum  . .  .formans  of  w.  396,  397  here. 


Young  Virgil's  Poetry  121 

The  flowers  follow  one  after  the  other,  heralded  no  less  than  five 
times  by  hie,  which  thrice  stands  in  the  same  position  in  the  verse. 

Contrast  now  the  manner  in  which  a  similar  motive  is  treated  in  the 
Bucolics.  Again  it  is  a  shepherd  offering  his  beloved  a  gift.^  The 
passage  contains  virtually  the  same  number  of  lines,  and  almost  as 
many  objects  are  specified;  but  its  wealth  of  description  is  without 
confusion.  Obvious  anaphora  is  avoided,  and  has  emotional  value 
when  it  appears  (tibi  —  tibi).  Verbs  and  participles  are  sprinkled  in 
with  the  nouns,  to  prevent  the  effect  of  a  list.  The  flowers  are  not 
merely  named ;  they  form  part  of  the  action.  The  action  is  distributed 
by  the  introduction  of  other  persons  besides  the  shepherd  himself. 
The  offering  is  diversified  by  the  presence  of  fruit  among  the  flowers, 
by  its  distribution  among  different  actors,  and  finally,  by  its  personi- 
fication and  the  use  of  the  case  of  address. 

The  use  of  participles,  particularly  the  present  participle,  is  free,  not 
to  say  excessive  in  the  Culex;  in  his  later  works,  Virgil  retained  his 
fondness  for  participles,  but  kept  it  within  bounds.  A  special  crudity 
is  the  combination  of  an  adjective  and  an  adjectival  present  participle, 
without  a  connective,  modifying  the  same  noun.  Perhaps  we  should 
not  call  it  a  crudity,  but  rather  a  trait  of  style,  for  it  is  employed  by 
Catullus  and  Lucretius.    In  the  former  we  find  a  verse  ^ 

Saepe  tibi  studioso  animo  venante  requirens 
Carmina  uti  possem  mittere  Battiadae 

in  which,  besides  the  use  of  adjective  and  participle  in  combination, 
there  is  a  piling  up  of  the  idea  of  desire  that  Catullus  wishes  to  em- 
phasize, and  does  so  with  good  effect  despite  the  tautology;  it  is  one 
wave  surging  through  the  verse,  like  Lucretius's ' 

hie  temere  incassum  frustra  mare  saepe  coortum. 

Tautology  appears  with  the  combination  of  adjective  and  participle 
in  Lucretius,  as  * 

insequitur  candens  confestim  lucidus  aer, 

1  Eel.  2,  45  S. 

*  116,  I.  I  agree  with  Ellis,  against  Merrill,  that  studioso  should  be  construed 
with  animo,  not  with  tibi.  See  both  editions  ad  loc.  For  other  examples  see  the 
sixty-fourth  poem,  e.  g.,  87:  Suavis  exspirans  castus  odores  |  lectulus. 

*  Lucr.  5,  1002;  2,  1059  f. 

*  4,  340.     For  an  awkward  justaposition  of  participles,  see  6,  1 260  S. 


122  Edward  Kennard  Rand 

a  verse  that  somehow  we  had  better  not  try  to  improve.  In  i, 
34-40,  we  have  a  splendid  passage  of  seven  Unes,  in  which  there  are 
as  many  participles. 

These  and  many  other  verses  of  Lucretius  explain  what  we  find  in 
the  Culex.     Two  striking  examples  occur  at  the  beginning  of  the 

P        ■  gloria  perpetuom  lucens,  mansura  per  aevom  (38) 

^^^  tibi  sospes 

debita  felices  memoretur  vita  per  annos, 
grata  bonis  lucens  (39) 

and  there  are  many  others.^  As  in  Lucretius,  the  construction  ap- 
pears in  a  passage  flavored  with  tautology: 

at  volucres  patulis  residentes  dulcia  ramis 
carmina  per  varies  edunt  resonantia  cantus  (146). 

Now  this  free  use  of  the  participle  in  conjunction  with  adjectives  is 
rare  enough  in  the  Bucolics,  the  Georgics,  and  the  Aeneid.  In  the 
light  of  Catullus  and  Lucretius,  we  cannot  call  it  merely  the  rude  art 
of  a  youthful  poet.  But  it  went  out  of  style,  apparently  through 
Virgil's  own  efforts.  However,  there  is  at  least  one  place  in  his  later 
poems  in  which  he  reverts  to  it,  finding  it  useful  for  a  special  effect  — 
the  description  of  a  rushing  and  hissing  stream: 

saxosusque  sonans  Hypanis  Mysusque  Caicus.* 

But  though  the  Culex  is  marred  by  infelicities,'  we  commit  a  petitio 
principii  by  declaring  them  too  bad  for  Virgil  at  the  age  of  fifteen.   We 

^  The  adjective  is  combined  with  the  present  participle  in  41;  49;  76;  120; 
146  f.;  166;  195;  385;  394.  In  these  examples,  both  adjective  and  participle  are 
descriptive  epithets.  I  do  not  include  cases  like  163  f.,  where  the  participle  is 
narrative.  Adjective  and  future  participle:  20;  38;  362.  Adjective  and  perfect 
passive  participle:  70;  158  f.;  164;  213  f.;  240;  253;  267;  365.  Two  adjectives, 
perfect  participle  and  present  participle:  234 f .  Genmdive  and  perfect  passive  par- 
ticiple; 260.  Perfect  passive  participle  and  future  participle;  1 13  f .  Two  adjectives: 
237.  Two  perfect  passive  participles:  62  f.;  127  f.  This  feature  of  style  deserves  a 
new  treatment.  One  would  expect  it  in  C.  Eymer,  De  Adpositorum  apud  Poetas 
Rotnanos  Usu,  Marburg,  1905,  but  though  he  has  a  section  on  De  singulorum 
substantivorum  cum  hints  adiectivis  coniunctionibus,  he  hardly  broaches  the  matter. 

*  Georg.  4,  370.  Servius,  Philargyrius  and  later  hands  in  two  of  the  Bemenses 
prefer  saxosum,  but  the  weight  of  the  tradition  is  against  them. 

'  This  is  the  burden  of  Leo's  argument  against  the  genuineness  of  the  Culex; 
op.  cit.,  pp.  IS  ff. 


Young  Virgil's  Poetry  123 

are  similarly  presumptuous  if  we  find  that  the  stylistic  divergences  be- 
tween the  poem  and  the  later  works  place  it  beyond  the  pale.  An 
effort  of  this  sort  has  been  recently  made  by  a  pupil  of  Birt's,  W.  Holt- 
schmidt.^  This  writer  considers  in  the  present  dissertation  merely 
the  use  of  verbs  and  adjectives.  His  data  hardly  justify  his  conclu- 
sions. For  example,  he  has  311  entries  under  verb  forms.  He  finds 
that  22  verbs  are  "  omnino  aliena  a  Vergilio."^  Then  there  are  61 
which  Virgil  has,  but  uses  in  a  different  sense;  of  these,  46  ^^ magnum 
praebent  dis crimen  inter  Vergilii  et  Culicis  scriptoris  elocutionem."  The 
remaining  15  may  "  possibly  be  defended."  This  looks  like  a  damag- 
ing indictment.  But  to  consider  merely  the  most  dangerous  list  of 
"  omnino  aliena,"  nine  of  the  instances  are  found  in  Lucretius.  These 
are  cubuere,  dubium  sit,  existat,  praepandit,^  propulit,  prosternit,  pro- 
stravit*  transcendat,^  tribuere}  It  is  natural  that  a  sixteen-year  old 
poet  should  adopt  from  his  most  important  model  certain  phrases 
which  he  abandoned  later.  This  is  particularly  true  of  prosaic  ex- 
pressions, like  dubium  est  and  exsistere.  We  note  in  this  connection 
that  eight  more  of  the  "  un-VirgiUan  "  verbs  are  found  in  Ciceronian 
and  other  contemporary  prose:  aver  sari,  causam  dicere,  obcaecaveraty 
comparat^  conformare,  iniunxit,  inscendere.  This  leaves  an  irreducible 
minimmn  of  five  entries  (four  words)  which  cannot  be  explained,  so 
far  as  we  know,  by  the  environment  of  the  young  poet;  they  first 
appear  in  poetry  written  after  54  B.C.  The  words  are:  Immoritur 
(Horace,  Ovid);  obstrepit  (Horace,  Propertius);  refovebat,  refoves 
(Ovid);  letat  (Ovid).®    Supposing  the  Culex  genuine,  I  must  assume 

^  De  Culicis  Carminis  Sermone  et  de  Tempore  quo  Scriptum  sit.  Marburg  Disser- 
tation, 1913. 

»  P.  121. 

'  V.  16.    Note  the  reminiscence  of  Lucretius  5,  272;  6,  638  in  v.  17. 

*  V.  69.  See  Lucr.  2,  29  and  below,  pp.  1 245.  on  the  imitation  of  this  passage  by 
the  author  of  the  Culex. 

'  V.  84.    The  direct  model  is  Lucr.  3,  60. 

'  V.  388.    For  exactly  the  same  use  see  Lucr.  5,  869. 

'  Two  entries,  once  with  the  infinitive.  Parat  with  the  infinitive  is  Vi> 
gilian. 

B  Note  that  in  one  of  the  two  places  in  which  Ovid  uses  letare  {Met.  3,  55:  leUk- 
toque  corpora),  there  is  obvious  imitation  of  the  Cuiex  in  the  immediate  context. 
See  above,  p.  117,  Note  i;  and  also  cf.  Culex  42  with  Met.  3,  50. 


124  Edward  Kennard  Rand 

that  these  words  were  first  used  by  young  Virgil  and  later  fancied  by 
his  admirers  Horace  and  Ovid,  though  not  repeated  by  Virgil  himself. 
Indeed,  I  should  expect  just  such  evidence  as  this  to  prove  the  gen- 
uineness of  the  piece.  Virgil  kept  his  vocabulary  alive,  as  Dryden 
found,^  by  constant  variation.  A  very  easy  form  to  invent,  especially 
under  urgence  of  the  metre  or  the  desire  for  assonance,  is  a  new  com- 
pound verb;  three  of  our  instances  are  of  this  kind.  It  is  further  true 
that  Virgil  sometimes  never  used  again  a  word  or  form  appearing  in 
one  of  his  earlier  works.  Looking  merely  at  verbs  compounded  with 
con,  we  find  commaculare  in  the  Bucolics,  but  not  elsewhere;  cogitare, 
collocare,  colludere,  compescere,  comprendere,  concidere,  conflare,  con- 
fluere  in  the  Georgics  but  not  elsewhere.  This  list  would  offer  excellent 
material  for  proving  the  Georgics  spurious  on  the  basis  of  the  vocabu- 
lary of  the  Bucolics  and  the  Aeneid.  Holtschmidt's  data,  which  I 
have  tested  with  some  care,  are  not  more  significant  elsewhere  than 
in  the  present  specimen.  In  brief,  I  find  them  of  interest  in  proving 
the  exact  opposite  of  what  he  infers  that  they  prove. 

But  to  illustrate  now  what  excellencies  young  Virgil  had  attained, 
and  what  lay  before  him  still,  I  would  invite  the  reader's  attention  to 
one  of  the  best  passages  in  the  poem,  the  beginning  of  the  shepherd's 
soliloquy  on  the  joys  of  the  country  Ufe.^  The  model  for  these  lines  is 
the  famous  passage  at  the  beginning  of  the  second  book  of  Lucretius.' 
Young  Virgil  indicates  his  source  clearly  enough  by  a  few  touches, 
but  there  is  no  palpable  borrowing.  He  replaces  specific  description 
by  typical  examples.*  He  recasts  the  whole  passage  in  a  more  peri- 
odic style.  The  period  is  too  long  and  inflated,  but  the  construction 
as  a  whole  is  more  stately  and  less  casual  than  Lucretius's  sentence. 
He  has  not,  however,  avoided  the  tautology  which  his  great  model 
had  permitted. 

^  "  Virgil,  above  all  poets,  had  a  stock,  which  I  may  call  almost  inexhaustible, 
of  figurative,  elegant,  and  sounding  words.  —  (He)  call'd  upon  me  in  every  line 
for  some  new  word,  and  I  paid  so  long,  that  I  was  almost  bankrupt;  so  that  the 
latter  end  must  needs  be  more  burdensome  than  the  beginning  or  the  middle;  and 
consequently,  the  Twelfth  Aeneid  cost  me  double  the  time  of  the  First  and  Second." 
Dedication  of  the  Aeneis,  Cambridge  edition,  ed.  G.  R.  Noyes,  1908,  p.  518. 

*  Vv.  57  £f.    Discussed  by  Miss  E.  S.  Jackson,  op.  cit.,  C.  Q.,  v  (191 1),  p.  167. 

*  2,  14-39:  o  miseras  hominum  mentes,  etc. 

*  Cf .  Lucr.  2,  24  f.  and  Culex  62,  67. 


Young  Virgil's  Poetry  125 

The  passage  is  worked  into  its  final  form  in  the  Georgics}  Here,  as 
in  the  Culex,  Virgil  begins  with  an  accusative  of  exclamation,  to 
which  is  attached  a  dependent  clause.  The  ensuing  conditional 
clauses  {si  non  .  .  .  nee  .  .  .  neque  .  .  .  nee)  are  followed,  just  as  in  the 
Culex,  by  at,^  the  period  ending,  after  the  effective  repetition  of  at, 
with  absunt.  In  the  earlier  poem,  there  is  similar  anaphora  of  si  in 
the  protasis.  As  anaphora  cannot  well  occur  in  both  protasis  and 
apodosis,  Virgil  restricts  it,  in  the  later  passage,  to  the  apodosis, 
thereby  giving  the  end  of  the  sentence  greater  emphasis.  In  the 
Culex,  the  period  tapers  off  into  a  cum  clause,  in  the  manner  of  Lu- 
cretius. Both  passages  end  with  an  impressive  series  of  details,  ar- 
ranged in  two  sentences  with  anaphora  of  the  demonstrative  pronoun 
or  pronominal  adjective,  illic . . .  per  illos  in  the  Georgics;  atque  Ulum . . . 
illi  in  the  Culex.  In  the  Georgics,  a  full-fledged  period  caps  the  cUmax. 
But  young  Virgil  has  his  eye  on  climax,  too,  and  ends,  if  not  periodi- 
cally, yet  with  a  swinging  series  of  adjectives,  participles,  and  nouns, 
distinguished  by  rich  assonance  and  rapid  movement. 

In  a  way,  the  Culex  marks  a  progress  beyond  the  hexameters  of 
Lucretius  and  the  structure  of  his  sentences.  One  notes  —  not  every- 
where, but  here  and  there  —  a  conscious  effort  to  tighten  the  loose,  to 
drop  the  superfluous,  to  arrange  the  Imsymmetrical.  The  easy  grace 
of  Lucretius's  verse 

propter  aquae  rivum  sub  ramis  arboris  altae  • 

in  which  the  words  drip  on  pleasantly  to  the  end,  is  refashioned  com- 
pactly into 

rivum  propter  aquae  viridi  sub  fronde  latentem.* 

^  2,  458  ff :  o  fortunatos  nimium,  etc. 

*  Vollmer  should  not  spoil  the  Georgic  effect  by  reading  a  pectore  for  at  pectore 
in  Ctilex  68.  He  is  doubtless  right  in  thinking  o  pectore  the  reading  of  the  ancestor 
of  all  the  manuscripts  extant,  but  at  pectore  is  an  inevitable  emendation.  It  was 
made  by  the  author  of  the  Excerpta  in  the  eleventh  century  and  later  by  the  Italian 
humanists.  Incidently,  I  think  that  Vollmer  places  too  high  a  value  on  the  £»• 
cerpta  as  a  first-hand  source.  Its  good  readings  not  found  elsewhere  might  easily 
have  been  emendarions,  and  it  contains  a  number  of  violent  changes  such  as  are 
not  infrequent  in  compilations  of  extracts.  The  compiler  means  not  to  produce 
a  scholar's  text  of  Virgil  but  to  provide  the  reader  with  an  easily  intelligible  an- 
thology of  maxims  and  purple  patches. 

'  2,  30. 

*  V.  390.   The  Lucretian  model  makes  it  certain  that  laUnkm  agrees  with  rivum 


1 26  Edward  Kennard  Rand 

Here  the  first  word  and  the  last  lock  the  verse  into  a  well-organized 
unit,  in  which  the  sense  is  kept  in  suspense.  When  Virgil  repeated 
Lucretius's  phrase  —  of  which  he  was  obviously  fond  —  for  a  second 
time,  in  the  Bucolics^  he  Ukewise  arranged  the  elements  in  cUmax, 
though  of  a  different  kind. 

Where  did  young  Virgil  find  a  model  for  this  orderly  compactness  ? 
Possibly  he  had  read  Cicero's  attempts  at  verse,  which,  however  lack- 
ing in  poetical  intensity,  could  not  help  reflecting  the  sense  of  careful 
arrangement  ingrained  in  the  master  of  formal  oratorical  style.  We 
do  not  need,  however,  to  look  for  a  pattern  outside  of  Lucretius  him- 
self, outside  of  the  passages  in  which  he  condescended  to  art. 

Aenaedum  genetrix,  hominum  divumque  voluptas, 
alma  Venus,  caeli  subter  labentia  signa 
quae  mare  navigerum,  quae  terras  frugiferentis 
concelebras,  per  te  quoniam  genus  omne  animantum 
concipitur  visitque  exortum  lumina  soils: 
te,  dea,  te  fugiunt  venti,  te  nubila  caeli 
adventumque  tuum,  tibi  sua  vis  daedala  tellus 
summittit  Acres,  tibi  rident  aequora  ponti 
placatumque  nitet  diffuse  lumine  caelum. 

What  could  be  more  Virgilian  than  these  lines,  with  their  conscious 
suspense  and  careful  cUmax  ?  *  Cicero's  comment  on  Lucretius  is  pro- 
foundly true  (if  left  unemended) — multis  luminibus  ingeni,  multae  tamen 
artis?  Lucretius  did  not  care  about  the  rules.  He  was  a  poet  malgri  lui. 
He  wished  to  drive  home  the  true  gospel  in  the  most  telling  way,  using 
poetry  as  a  sugar-coating  for  the  wholesome  pill.  But  intense  convic- 
tion, imagination  at  white  heat,  is  bound  to  express  itself  at  times  with 
utter  clarity  and  simpUcity,  with  the  effect  of  great  art  at  which  the 
poet  had  not  primarily  aimed  —  all  of  which  Cicero  says  in  "  tamen." 

"  (so  Sillig,  Forbiger  and  apparently  Leo  and  VoUmer)  and  not  with  locum  (Heyne, 
Ellis). 

^  Eel.  8,  87:  propter  aquae  rivum  viridi  procumbit  in  ulva. 

*  There  is  one  detail  that  Virgil  would  not  ordinarily  have  allowed — the  elision 
in  the  fifth  foot  in  v.  4. 

^  Ad  Q.  Fr.  2,  9,  3.  Orelli  with  multae  etiam  artis  and  Bergk  with  non  multae 
tamen  artis  do  their  best  to  make  Cicero  banal  or  egregiously  wrong.  For  a  careful 
discussion  of  this  passage,  see  Litchfield  in  H.  S.  C.  P.,  xxiv  (1913),  147  2- 


Young  Virgil's  Poetry  127 

It  was,  then,  to  these  passages  of  great  and  simple  art  to  which  young 
Virgil  instinctively  turned  and  which  helped  the  development  of  his 
innate  tendencies  into  a  style. 

That  the  passages  from  the  Culex  and  the  Georgics  just  discussed  are 
related  as  model  and  imitation  nobody  would  deny.^  It  is  difficult  to 
believe  that  the  talented  author  of  the  Culex  could  have  had  before 
him  the  perfected  reserve  of  Virgil's  Georgics,  to  say  nothing  of  the 
Aeneid,  and  yet  kept  on  with  the  crude  tautologies  and  participial  con- 
structions that  we  have  noted.  This  poem  precedes,  not  follows,  the 
admitted  works  of  Virgil.  He  turned  to  this,  just  as  he  always  turned 
to  his  earlier  works,  sometimes  to  improve  a  first  attempt,  sometimes 
to  borrow  what  he  had  done  well  enough  the  first  time.* 

Virgil's  goal  was  epic.  He  had  to  struggle  through  a  hostile  literary 
environment  before  reaching  it,  but  the  signs  of  an  epic  temperament 
are  apparent  even  in  this  his  earliest  work,  A  lad  who  spends  his 
fancy  on  a  mock-heroic  may  one  day  attempt  the  heroic;  indeed  he 
promises  so  to  do.'  Moreover,  certain  passages,  if  they  chanced  to 
have  come  to  us  as  fragments,  might  well  seem  portions  of  some  lost 
poem  of  a  seriously  epic  character.  There  is  a  description  of  a  storm  at 
sea,  for  instance,  which  for  boyish  workmanship  is  not  unworthy  of  the 
vastly  more  epic  storms  in  the  Aeneid* 

All  in  all,  the  Culex  gives  us  what  we  should  expect  to  find  in  what 
the  ancient  biographer  says  it  is,  a  poem  composed  by  Virgil  at  the  age 
of  sixteen.  It  has  the  crudities  of  a  first  attempt  and  reflects  the 
Alexandrian  environment  into  which  Virgil  was  born.  The  new  im- 
pulses stirring  in  the  poem  are  Lucretian  moral  earnestness  and  the 
promise  of  genius  in  the  young  poet  himself. 

^  For  another  example  of  Virgil's  later  refashioning  of  motives  less  well  executed 
in  the  Culex  cf.  w.  294  S.  and  Georg.  4,  489. 

*  See  Miss  Jackson's  article  and  E.  Albrecht,  WiederholU  Verse  und  Verstheile 
bet  Vergil  in  Hermes,  xvi  (1881),  393  ff. 

»  Vv.  8  ff . 

*  Vv.  344-52:  comes  erat  .  .  .  ac  mere  in  terras  caeli  fragor.  Virgil  uses  the 
bucolic  diaeresis  with  similar  effect  in  his  description  of  the  thunder  storm  in  Georg. 
I,  331,  save  that  it  comes  not  at  the  end  of  the  passage,  as  here,  but  with  far  greater 
appropriateness,  several  removes  from  the  end.  The  pause  marks  a  lightning-stroke, 
but  one  in  the  thick  of  the  shower  and  not  the  final  stroke. 


128  Edward  Kennard  Rand 

m 

Catalepton 

If  the  Ctdex  was  written  under  the  spell  of  Lucretius,  the  Catalepton 
attests  a  vigorously  Catullan  period  in  Virgil's  career.  His  schooling, 
the  ancient  biographer  informs  us,  took  place  first  at  Cremona,  then, 
after  he  had  assumed  the  toga  virilis  in  his  fifteenth  year,  at  Milan, 
shortly  after  which  time  he  came  to  Rome.^  If  the  Culex  was  written 
in  his  sixteenth  year,  54  B.C.,  he  may  well  have  come  to  the  city  in  52.* 
There  he  found  himself  in  the  world  of  Catullus.  He  may  have 
already  known,  at  Milan  or  at  Mantua,  something  of  the  works  of  the 
poet  who  had  made  North  Italy  famous,^  but  now  he  entered  the  inner 
circle  of  admirers, 

nil  praeter  Calvum  at  doctus  cantare  CatuUum.* 

The  title  Kara  Aeirrov,  used  by  Alexandrian  writers,^  means  '  In 
Trifling  Vein  '  or  '  Trifles.'  The  collection  comprises  the  Priapea  and 
the  Epigrammata.^  The  pieces  are  not  all  of  the  same  period,  but  most 
of  them  date  from  Virgil's  youth,  and  immediately  suggest  Catullus. 
Indeed,  Catullus  had  borrowed  the  same  title,  translating  it  Nugae  for 
one  of  his  volumes  of  verse. 

Manuscripts  of  the  collection  are  far  less  abundant  than  those  of  the 
Culex.  The  tradition  is  divided  into  two  main  branches,  one  repre- 
sented by  the  Bruxellensis,  s.  XII,  and  the  other  by  two  varieties  of 
fifteenth  century  manuscripts.^  On  the  other  hand,  there  are  excellent 
bits  of  external  testimony,  including  Quintilian's.* 

*  Vita  Donatiana,  ed.  Brummer,  p.  2,  20  ff. 

*  See  Theodor  Birt,  Jugendverse  und  Heimatpoesie  Vergils.  Erkldrung  des  Cata- 
lepton, 1910,  p.  17.  This  excellent  work  marks  a  notable  advance  in  the  interpre- 
tation of  the  Catalepton. 

*  On  the  Catullan  elements  in  the  Catalepton  see  Birt,  op.  cit.,  p.  14,  Sommer,  op. 
cit.  (above  p.  3),  pp.  71  ff.,  99  ff.,  and  the  writer's  article  on  Catullus  and  the  Augus- 
tans,  in  H.  S.  C.  P.,  xvii  (1906),  17  f.    Also  see  above,  p.  12,  note  i. 

*  Horace  Sertn.  i,  10,  19. 

*  Birt  op.  cit.  pp.  6  f. 

*  See  above,  p.  7. 

^  See  Vollmer  in  his  edition,  p.  126. 
8  Inst.  Or.  8,  3,  27  f. 


Young  Virgil's  Poetry  129 

Priapea 

The  Priapea  are  graceful  and  sprightly  soliloquies  of  the  scarecrow- 
god,  who  figures  also  in  the  Georgics  and  the  Bucolics}  Like  the  other 
specimens  preserved,  they  are  inscriptional  in  form.  This  does  not 
mean  that  they  are  carved  each  on  some  statue  of  the  god.  They  have 
not  such  dignity  as  that.  They  stand  one  stage  higher  in  the  literary 
scale  than  latrine  graffiti?  They  are  scribbled  on  the  walls  of  the  god's 
rustic  shrine,^  or  brought  as  offerings  to  his  likeness,''  or  hung  on  a 
nearby  tree,  sometimes  with  a  blasting  effect.^  The  god  expects  a 
bountiful  supply  of  these  metrical  tributes,  and  threatens  his  usual 
punishment  if  the  poet  shghts  him.^  Along  with  indecency,  we  find 
delightful  touches  of  wit  and  pastoral  charm  and  rustic  piety.  Ancient 
religion  penetrated  life  in  regions  from  which  it  is  debarred  in  our 
colder  and  more  proper  times. 

Virgil's  Priapea  are,  according  to  Birt,'  the  earUest  complete  speci- 
mens of  the  kind  extant  in  Latin  Uterature.  Virgil  of  course  did  not 
invent  such  a  literary  type.  It  is  Hellenistic  and  Catullan.'  Virgil 
took  up  with  this  tradition  as  he  did  with  all,  or  almost  all,  the  topics 
that  were  going  the  rounds  among  the  successors  of  Catullus  whom  he 
knew  in  Rome.  He  shied  at  the  grossly  offensive  matter  and  made 
good  poetry  of  the  rest.  I  am  not  so  sure  that  the  Priapea  of  the  extant 
collection  are  all  of  a  later  date.'  This  collection  is  obviously  a  com- 
bination of  two  different  sets  of  Priapea]  the  first  two  poems  are  both 
introductions.  The  former  is  in  elegiacs;  Schanz  rightly  calls  it  the 
later  of  the  two.*    The  other,  in  hendecasyllabics,  is  in  imitation  of 

'  Georg.  4,  no  f.  Eel.  7,  33  ff.  In  the  latter  passage,  Priapus  is  custos  pauperis 
horii  just  as  in  Virgil's  Priapea  2,  4  and  3,  6. 

*  See  Priapea  48  (Baehrens,  P.  L.  M.  i,  73) :  Tu,  quicumque  vides  circa  tectoria 
nostra  (  Non  nimium  casti  carmina  plena  ioci,  |  Versibus  obscenis  ofifendi  desine: 
non  est  |  Mentula  subducti  nostra  supercilii. 

*  Ibid.,  2,  gf.:  Ergo  quidquid  id  est,  quod  otiosus  |  Templi  parietibus  tui 
notavi,  |  In  partem  accipias  bonam,  rogamus. 

*  Birt,  op.  cit.,  p.  aa. 

*  Priapea,  61. 

*  Ibid.,  41  and  47. 
'  Op.  cit.,  p.  47, 

'  Ibid.   See  also  Schanz,  op.  cit.,  §320. 
»  Ibid.,  and  Teuffel,  op.  cit.,  §  254,  5. 


130  Edward  Kennard  Rand 

Catullus's  preface  to  his  Nugae}  Various  echoes  of  Catullus  appear 
in  the  following  pieces;  most  of  them  occur  in  those  written  in  hendec- 
asyllabics  and  choliambics.'^  Ovidian  and  Horatian  reminiscences 
most  frequently  occur  in  the  elegiac  poems.^  No  hard  and  fast  line 
can  be  drawn,  and  none  can  gainsay  the  possibihty  that  all  the  pieces 
are  late  Augustan.  But  there  is  also  no  compelling  argument  against 
the  supposition  that  the  collection  is  made  up  of  an  earher  set,  Catul- 
lan  in  character,  in  which  elegiacs  are  rare,  and  a  later  Ovidian  set,  in 
which  elegiacs  predominate.  Whether  or  not  we  have  before  us 
various  pieces  that  contemporaries  or  predecessors  of  young  Virgil 
wrote,  we  may  be  tolerably  sure  that  the  Priapea  that  served 
him  as  models  are  well  enough  represented  by  those  that  have  come 
down  to  us. 

The  first  of  Virgil's  Priapea  is  in  elegiacs.  The  idea  of  the  poem  is, 
so  far  as  we  know,  his  own.*  Priapus  complains  that  though  he  is 
heaped  with  rustic  bounties  in  the  other  seasons,  winter  gives  him  a 
chilling  fear  that  despite  his  divinity,  some  lazy  rustic  may  turn  the 
ligneous  god  into  igneous  fuel.  There  is  quiet  humour  in  the  piece,  a 
touch  of  Horace's  satire  on  the  godhood  of  scarecrows  ^,  and  a  neat 
play  on  Lucre tius's  remarks  on  the  similarity  of  lignum  and  ignis. ^ 
Priapus,  who  frequently  comments  on  the  woodenness  of  his  nature,' 
fears  that  he  may  be  subjected  to  an  uncomfortable  kind  of  atomistic 
transformation: 

Nam  frigus  metuo  at  vereor  ne  ligneus  ignem 
Hie  deus  ignavis  praebeat  agricolis. 

^  Cf.  the  close  of  the  poem  (quoted  in  Note  3  above)  with  that  of  Catullus  i. 
Cf.  also  V.  3  with  Cat.  i,  7. 

*  Cf.  8,  3  with  Cat.  5,  3;  52,  11  with  Cat.  5,  12;  77,  10  with  Cat.  7,  2. 

'  Cf.  10, 4  and  73,  3;  with  Hor.  Serm.  i,  8,  i;  16,  5  with  Ovid,  EpisL  21  and  Ars. 
Am.  I,  457;  21,  3  with  Ovid.  Ars.  Am.  2,  265;  67,  33  with  Ovid.  Am.  1,  8,  47.  The 
whole  coloring  of  Priap.  67  is  Ovidian;  (cf.  80,  i  with  Ovid.  Am.  3,  7,  iff.).  It 
should  be  further  noted  that  Horace,  Serm.  i,  8,  is  only  a  longer  specimen  of  the 
type  of  Priap.  12,  32  and  46,  while  Priap.  3  is  ascribed  to  Ovid  by  the  elder  Seneca, 
Contr.  I,  2,  22.    See  Schanz,  loc.  cit. 

*  Birt,  op.  cit.  p.  22. 
'  Serm.  i,  8. 

*  This  point  has  escaped  Birt  and  other  editors,  so  far  as  I  can  discover.  Lucian 
Miiller  wished  to  " emend"  ligneus  into  lentus  in. 

">  Priapea  6,  i:  Qui  sum  ligneus,  ut  uides,  Priapus.    Cf.  10,  4;  73,  3,  etc. 


Young  VirgiVs  Poetry  131 

This,  then  is  a  pleasant  variation  on  a  famihar  theme  by  a  poet  ac- 
quainted Avith  Epicurean  science. 

In  the  second  poem,  which  is  a  longer  affair  in  iambics,  a  better 
favored  Priapus  speaks.  He  has  offerings  throughout  the  year,  his 
winter  reUsh  being  "  olives  cooked  with  cold."  ^  He  goes  on  to  boast 
of  the  goats  raised  in  his  pastures  —  as  though  he  were  responsible  for 
the  process  —  of  the  lambs  that  enable  their  owner,  with  better  luck 
than  the  shepherd  in  the  Bucolics  ^  to  come  back  from  town  laden  with 
coin,  and  of  the  heifers  that  despite  their  dam's  laments,  pour  out  their 
blood  at  the  shrines  of  the  gods;  this  verse,  like  that  in  the  preceding 
poem,  shows  that  the  writer  has  not  forgotten  his  Lucretius.'  Then 
comes  a  touch  of  the  traditional  coarseness,  handled  delicately,  and  in 
fact  with  a  moral  lesson  attached.  The  passer-by,  perhaps  induced 
by  Priapus's  vaunting  of  his  attractions,  attempts  an  insult.  He  is 
warned  that  the  bailiff,  who  opportunely  appears,  can  convert  the 
wooden  mentula  of  the  god  into  an  effective  club.* 

The  third  piece  is  in  the  beautiful  and  impetuous  Priapean  metre 
that  Catullus  had  employed  with  great  skill.^  The  god,  in  charge  of  a 
swampy  sort  of  garden  that  suggests  Mantua,'  boasts  of  the  pretty 
offerings  that  he  receives  from  the  farmer's  household: 

Florida  mihi  ponitur  picta  vera  corolla, 
primitus  tenera  virens  spica  mollis  arista, 
luteae  violae  mihi  lacteumque  papaver 
pallentesque  cucurbitae  et  suave  olentia  mala, 
uva  pampinea  rubens  educata  sub  umbra. 

1  I  think  that  we  should  read  as  the  archetype  of  our  manuscripts  evidently  did: 
Mihi  glauca  oliva  duro  cocia  frigore.  Glauca  is  a  traditional  epithet  of  the  olive; 
that  it  applies  strictly  to  the  leaf  rather  than  to  the  fruit  is  not  a  matter  worth 
quibbling  about.  Coda  frigore  refers  to  the  ripening  of  the  olive  in  the  late  autimm 
or  early  winter,  as  Voss  saw  (Birt,  op.  cit.,  p.  30). 

'  V.  13:  gravem  domum  remittit  acre  dexteram.    Cf.  Ed.  i,  35;  Mordum,  80. 

»  Cf.  V.  15  and  Lucretius,  2,  352  ff. 

*  The  correct  explanation  of  the  dosing  verses  b  given,  I  believe,  by  K.  Prinz, 
Berliner  Philol.  Wochenschrift,  1914,  1020  flF.  Some  genius  invented  Priapus  and 
his  organ,  which  at  once  affected  the  yokel  with  religious  awe,  cheered  him  with 
ribald  jests  and  provided  him  with  a  weapon  for  whacking  the  transgressor.  Priapus 
is  also  moral  —  for  once  —  in  a  poem  of  the  collection  (No.  64). 

'  Poem  17;  Frag.  2. 

•  Birt,  op.  cit.,  pp.  38  f. 


132  Edward  Kennard  Rand 

These  verses  have  the  lusciousness  of  CatuUus's 

quoi  cum  sit  viridissimo  nupta  flora  puella 
et  puella  tenellulo  delicatior  haedo,i 

and  the  richness  of  the  description  of  pastoral  tributes  in  the  second 
Eclogue.  Our  poet  has  also  learned  restraint  since  he  composed  that 
prolix  array  of  floral  offerings  in  the  Culex?  Faithful  to  his  charge,  the 
god  suggests  that  the  youthful  marauders  will  find  a  wealthier  and  less 
vigilant  Priapus  at  the  next-door  neighbour's,  to  which  he  kindly 
points  the  nearest  way.^ 

Virgil  would  not  have  been  ashamed  of  this  perfect  little  poem,  or  of 
its  companion-pieces,  in  any  period  of  his  career.  It  is  useless  to  guess 
how  long  they  were  written  before  the  Bucolics,  or  how  long  after.* 
We  must  not  divide  Virgil's  activity  into  water-tight  compartments  as 
though  he  could  not  turn  aside  from  writing  Bucolics  or  Georgics  or 
Aeneid  to  pleasant  Utile  jeux  d'  esprit  as  a  relief  from  the  larger  task. 
At  the  same  time,  it  is  most  natural  to  associate  these  pieces  with  the 
rest  of  the  Catalepton  and  Virgil's  apprenticeship  to  Catullus. 

Epigrammata 

The  Epigrammata  include  fourteen  pieces  in  various  CatuUan  metres, 
elegiac,  iambic,  and  choliambic;  the  familiar  hendecasyllabic,  Virgil 
did  not  try  —  at  least  there  are  no  specimens  of  this  metre  in  the 
present  collection.  The  elegiacs  are  of  the  CatuUan  and  not  of  the 
Ovidian  type;  the  later  practice  of  invariably  ending  the  pentameter 
with  a  dissyllable  is  not  observed  here.  Most  of  the  poems  are  early, 
and  in  character,  very  CatuUan,^  Some  show  us  the  youthful  Virgil 
among  the  poets  of  love  —  nothing  to  wonder  at  when  we  consider  the 
second  Eclogue  and  the  tenth,  with  its  tribute  to  Gallus  and  his  school. 
Virgil  is  one  of  a  group  of  young  writers,  Tucca  and  Varius  among  their 
number,  who  continue  the  vein  of  Calvus  and  Catullus. 

1  17, 14  f.  For  direct  echoes  of  Catullus,  for  the  CatuUan  character  of  the  metre, 
and  for  refinements  introduced  by  Virgil,  see  Birt,  op.  cit.,  pp.  45  f.  But  Birt  should 
not  call  CatuUus's  humorously  jolting  verse  (22)  "  imgeschickt." 

*  See  above,  p.  120. 

*  The  same  idea  appears  in  Priapea  51,  23  f. 

*  Not  long  before,  according  to  Birt,  pp.  16  ff. 

*  On  the  CatuUan  character  of  the  metre,  see  Sommer,  op.  cU.  (pp.  86ff.). 


Young  Virgil's  Poetry  133 

To  Tucca,  Virgil  complains  that  his  lady-love  has  returned  from  a 
visit,  but  is  not  the  more  accessible  to  him  for  that  reason,  as  her 
jealous  husband  keeps  her  under  lock  and  key.^  To  Varius,  he  con- 
fesses his  desperate  love  of  a  lad  —  he  first  refers  to  his  beloved  as 
TTodos,  and  then  realizing  how  shocked  the  critics  would  be  to  find  a 
Greek  word  in  a  Latin  verse,  calls  him  in  plain  Latin  iste  puer.  A  good 
bit  of  passion  lies  beneath  this  mock  compHance  with  the  purists'  rules.' 

Also  in  the  manner  of  Catullus  are  certain  boisterous  invectives, 
which  lack,  however,  the  inexpressible  filth  from  which  Catullus  did  not 
refrain.  In 'one  of  these,  Poem  No.  2,  he  satirizes  the  rhetorician 
Annius  Cimber,  archaistic  and  Atticistic  in  tendency,  who  poisoned 
his  brother  with  a  mess  of  his  own  style.  We  should  not  know  the 
name  of  the  rhetorician,  did  not  Quintilian  quote  the  epigram,  which 
he  considered  admirable.^  Ausonius  knew  it  too,  and  either  had  a 
fuller  text  of  it  than  we  have  or  sadly  bungled  our  present  text.*  I 
shall  make  no  fresh  attempt  to  analyze  the  ingredients  of  Cimber's 
deadly  concoction,^  but  a  word  may  be  said  as  to  the  date  of  the  epi- 
gram. The  murder  took  place  before  43  B.C.,  as  Cicero  refers  to  it  in 
the  Philippics,^  but  how  much  before,  we  do  not  know.  Cicero's 
language  does  not  imply  that  it  was  specially  recent.  If  it  had  occurred 
as  far  back  as  52,  Cicero's  remarks  would  still  have  point  —  he  simply 
finds  a  man  of  Cimber's  character  a  useful  example  of  the  kind  of  com- 
pany that  Antony  was  wont  to  keep.  The  epigram,  on  the  other  hand, 
should  probably  be  dated  not  very  long  after  the  event;  the  satire  of 

^  This  poem  has  at  last  been  satisfactorily  explained;  see  Birt,  pp.  48  ff. 

*  This,  I  take  it,  is  the  spirit  of  this  piece  (No.  7),  slightly  differing  from  that 
of  Priapea  3,  with  which  it  may  well  be  compared.  There  the  intent  is  to  ridicule 
elegant  circumlocutions  of  the  imvamished  vernacular. 

»  Inst.  Or.  8,  3,  27  ff. 

*  Gratnmaticomast.  5-9.  I  should  imagine  that  just  as  v.  2  is  lacking,  whether 
through  accident  or  intent,  in  Quintilian's  quotation,  the  archetype  of  our  manu- 
scripts may  have  omitted  after  v.  3  another  line  which  contained  the  al  Celtarum 
and  the  sil  that  puzzled  Ausonius. 

*  According  to  H.  W.  Garrod,  C.  Q.,  iv  (1910),  123  ff.,  the  satirized  forms  are 
Latin.  W.  Schmid,  Philologus,  Ixxii  (1913),  148,  finds  a  great  deal  more  Greek 
than  anybody  had  suspected  before.  H.  R.  Fairclough,  T.  A.  P.  A.,  xlvii  (1916), 
43  ff.,  suggests  that  the  lyr annus  Atticae  febris  may  refer  to  Thucydides  as  the 
masterful  describer  of  the  plague  at  Athens. 

*  II,  6,  14;   13,  12,  26. 


134  Edward  Kennard  Rand 

it,  somewhat  tame  at  the  best,  would  have  completely  lost  its  sting  four 
or  five  years  after  the  event.  The  situation,  I  think,  is  as  follows. 
Young  Virgil  has  come  to  Rome  and  is  studying  rhetoric.  Although,  as 
we  have  just  inferred,  not  wholly  a  purist,  he  is  disposed,  like  Horace 
later,  to  ridicule  fads  of  style.  Cimber,  who  was  faddish  in  style,  and 
most  reprehensible  in  morals,  kills  his  brother.  Out  comes  the  epigram 
at  once  —  Cimber  must  have  served  his  brother  with  a  dose  of  his  own 
vocabulary.  The  date  of  the  poem,  then,  is  virtually  that  of  the  mur- 
der itself;  this,  as  we  see  from  Cicero,  must  have  taken  place  before 
43  B.C.  From  what  we  have  learned  of  Virgil's  early  career,  we  may 
infer  that  both  events  occurred  round  about  the  year  52. 

Poems  6  and  12  are  companion-pieces  in  honor  of  a  certain  "Owl- 
eyes,"  Noctuinus,  who,  of  low  class  himself,  has  married  the  daughter 
of  Atilius,  one  of  the  landed  gentry  —  the  name  is  common  in  North 
Italy.  But  Owl-eyes  does  not  see  that  he  has  incidentally  married 
another  daughter  of  Atilius,  to  wit,  the  bottle.  The  old  gentleman 
is  pater  poiationis,  and  his  example  infects  his  son-in-law.  There  is 
a  dreadful  mix-up,  in  which  both  son-in-law  and  father-in-law  play 
the  part  of  husband.  The  poet  well  remarks,  in  a  verse  that  parodies 
Catullus,^  — 

gener  socerque,  perdidistis  omnia. 

Both  poems  show  something  of  the  hot  blood  of  Catullus.  The  setting 
of  the  twelfth  is  the  wedding-day;  it  is  a  fine  specimen  of  Fescennina 
iocatio  and  ends  boisterously  with  the  marriage  cry  — 

thalassio,  thalassio,  thalassio. 

Parody  of  Catullus  on  a  more  elaborate  scale  appears  in  No.  10. 
The  parody  is  at  the  expense  not  of  Catullus  but  of  the  subject  of  the 
poem,  a  former  mule-driver,  now  a  provincial  magistrate,  who  has 
dedicated  a  portrait  or  statue  of  himself  in  a  temple  of  Castor  and 
Pollux.  Catullus's  poem  on  the  yacht  (No.  4),  is  the  model;  it  is 
cleverly  adapted  to  the  new  theme  by  surprisingly  few  verbal  changes. 
Only  two  verses  are  made  up  entirely  of  new  material,  and  only  two  of 
the  original  are  passed.^    It  is  an  extraordinary  metrical  tour  of  force, 

1  Catal.  6,  6;  Catullus  29,  24. 

*  I  do  not  find  it  necessary  to  assume  with  Birt  and  others  that  our  manuscripts 
have  omitted  a  line  after  v.  19,  or  even  to  emend  utrumque  to  tUrimque  with  Heinsius. 


Young  Virgil's  Poetry  135 

and  the  invective  is  neat  and  pungent.  The  upstart  is  beyond  doubt  a 
local  magnate  of  Cremona  or  some  other  place  near  Virgil's  home 
town,  and  not  as  scholars  have  supposed  tiU  lately,  Ventidius  Bassus.^ 
Thereby  disappears  the  only  clue  to  an  exact  dating  of  the  poem.  I 
am  inclined  to  put  it  with  the  other  Catullan  pieces,  in  the  early  years 
of  Virgil's  sojourn  in  Rome.  It  shows  that  Horace,  who  chose  a  very 
similar  theme  for  his  fourth  Epode,  was  helped  by  Virgil  as  well  as  by 
Catullus  in  shooting  Archilochian  iambi  at  the  targets  of  his  satire. 

Another  seemingly  early  piece  is  No.  3.  It  commemorates  the 
downfall  of  some  mighty  monarch  of  men,  who  had  subdued  the 
kings  and  nations  of  Asia,  and  after  levelling  all  other  obstacles  with 
his  spear,  was  aiming  at  Rome  herself.  But  in  the  very  midst  of  the 
struggle,  he  fell  headlong,  driven  from  his  fatherland  to  exile.  In  a 
rather  boyish  and  obvious  fashion,  that  recalls  a  passage  in  the  Cidex* 
the  poet  ends  with  moralizings  on  the  arbitrary  sway  of  Fortune. 

There  have  been  many  candidates  proposed  for  the  hero  of  this 
piece.  Birt  makes  out  a  strong  case  for  Alexander '  —  a  subject  that 
might  have  been  assigned  as  a  rhetorical  theme  of  the  kind  with  which 
Roman  schoolboys  were  famiUar.  But  one  detail  is  not  explained  by 
Birt;  Alexander's  later  career  may  be  described  as  an  "  exile  from 
home,"  but  he  was  hardly  driven  to  it.  We  are  rather  inclined  to 
look  about  for  a  contemporary  hero.  Phraates  has  been  suggested,* 
but  Virgil  would  have  written  something  more  powerful  than  the 
present  piece  in  32  B.C.  or  the  years  immediately  following,  we  should 
imagine,  granting  that  Phraates  deserves  to  be  set  on  so  exalted  a  bad 
eminence  as  he  is  here  assigned.  One  also  thinks  of  Pompey,  but  his 
end  was  more  than  exile,  his  station  was  hardly  that  of  a  king,  and  his 
purpose  would  scarcely  be  described  even  by  a  Caesarian  as  that  of 
imposing  grave  servUium  on  the  Roman  people.  Antony  is  another 
selection.^  The  opening  Unes  are  not  too  extravagant  a  description  of 
the  oriental  pomp  that  Antony  had  assumed,  and  he  surely  threatened 

^  See  Birt's  excellent  remarks,  pp.  116  f.,  and  E.  T.  Merrill.  Classical  Philology, 
viii  (1913),  389  ff.  Sommer,  op.  cit.,  p.  77  still  adheres  to  Ventidius. 

*  Vv.  339  fiE.  »  Pp.  61  flF.    So  Sommer,  p.  78. 

*  See  Nettleship  in  The  Works  0}  Vtrgil,  Conington  and  Nettleship,  revised  by 
Haverfield,  1898, 1,  p.  xxi. 

'  See  especially,  N.  De  Witt,  American  Journal  of  Philology,  zxxiii  (1912),  317  fif. 


136  Edward  Kennard  Rand 

Rome  with  slavery;  but  his  fall  was  to  death,  not  exile.  He  lived  for 
about  a  year  after  Actium,  but  life  in  Alexandria  was  anything  but  an 
exile  for  him.  We  are,  therefore,  left  with  Mithradates,  whom  every 
detail  in  the  poem  does  fit  at  the  moment  when  he  fled  from  Pompey 
into  the  wilds  of  the  Cimmerian  Bosporus.^  This  was  in  66.  The  king 
recovered  sufficiently  to  plan  reprisals  and  even  a  new  attack  on  Italy, 
but  finally  succumbed  to  the  conspiracy  organized  by  his  son  Phar- 
naces  and  ended  his  life  by  poison  and  the  sword  in  63.  We  are  not 
told  that  Virgil,  seven  or  eight  years  old  at  the  time,  was  writing 
poems  at  that  tender  age,  but  this  piece  might  well  have  been  done 
about  the  time  of  the  Culex,  when  he  was  still  a  school-boy  at  Milan. 
The  career  of  Mithradates,  whom  Cicero  in  45  called  the  greatest  king 
after  Alexander,^  would  have  impressed  itself  on  the  imagination  of 
school-boys  and  school-teachers  for  some  time  after  that  monarch's 
death.  The  subject  prescribed,  or  chosen,  is  not  the  death  of  Mith- 
radates but  his  downfall.  It  is  a  better  moment  to  select  than  the 
death,  which  did  not  immediately  follow,  to  illustrate  the  point  set 
forth  in  the  closing  lines. 

We  now  come  to  a  pair  of  poems  of  considerable  biographical  im- 
portance. The  fourth  is  addressed  to  a  certain  Musa,  a  learned  devo- 
tee of  CUo  ^  and  all  the  choir  of  Phoebus.  He  is  about  to  part  from 
Virgil,  who  swears  eternal  affection  to  him,  though  scarcely  hoping 
that  it  will  be  requited.  This  is  the  language  of  respect  appropriate 
in  accosting  a  patron  or  somebody  of  a  higher  station  in  life.  The 
eleventh  poem  laments  the  death  of  Octavius,  a  writer  of  Roman 
history,  who,  rumor  had  it,  died  from  excessive  fondness  of  the  bowl. 
Piecing  together  the  two  poems,  we  find  them  concerned  with  the 
same  man,  Octavius  Musa,  who  was  a  member  of  the  literary  circle  to 
which  Horace,  Virgil,  and  Macenas  belonged,^  and  one  of  the  agents 

*  Appian,  Mithr.  102. 

2  Acad.  Pr.  2,  i,  3;  ille  rex  post  Alexandrum  maximus. 

*  Birt  tries  to  show  (pp.  69  f.,  131),  I  think  without  success,  that  Clio  in  this 
poem  and  historia  in  the  Eleventh  do  not  indicate  that  Octavius  wrote  history.  I 
should  rather  infer  that  he  was  a  versatile  writer  like  PoUio,  trying  his  hand  both 
at  history  and  various  sorts  of  verse,  epic  perhaps  included. 

*  Hor.  Serin,  i,  10,  82.  Horace's  Octavius,  whether  Octavius  Musa  or  not,  is 
placed  in  exalted  company  —  Plotius,  Varius,  Maecenas,  Virgil,  Valgius,  Fuscus 
and  the  Visci. 


Young  Virgil's  Poetry  137 

of  Octavian  during  the  disturbances  at  Cremona.  He  paid  off  an  old 
grudge  on  the  Mantuans  by  taking  a  slice  from  their  territory  too;  ^ 
it  looks  as  if  he  were,  or  had  been,  a  resident  of  Cremona.  It  is  now 
tolerably  clear  who  the  Octavius  is  in  whose  honor  the  boy  Virgil 
wrote  his  Culex.  He  was  a  somewhat  younger  boy  of  higher  station 
whom  Virgil  met  in  his  school-days  at  Cremona  or  Milan.  We  get 
glimpses  of  his  career  down  to  35  B.C.,  when  Horace  published  the 
first  book  of  his  Satires  and  we  find  his  death  recorded  in  the  eleventh 
poem  of  the  Catalepton.  Not  long  after  the  Culex,  perhaps  even  be- 
fore Virgil  had  left  Milan,^  occurred  the  parting  between  the  two 
youths  and  Virgil's  poem  of  farewell.  It  suggests  in  spirit  several  of 
Catullus's  poems  of  friendship,'  and  perhaps,  though  this  is  a  dubious 
point,  contains  reminiscences  of  Catullus.'*  The  last  poem  in  the 
series  is  not  very  much  later  than  35,  for  Octavius  is  outHved  by  his 
father  and  goes  before  his  contribution  to  historia  Rotnana  has  been 
completed.^  Octavius  is  the  first  among  the  heroes  of  young  Virgil,  who 
was  born  with  a  passionate  hero-worship,  and  successively  transferred 
his  worship,  for  good  cause,  to  various  heroes.  We  can  imagine  that 
Octavius's  treatment  of  the  Mantuans  may  have  led  to  estrange- 
ment. Thepresenttribute,  written  after  his  death,  is  a  trifle  chilly;  an 
ardent  admirer  would  not  have  found  it  necessary  to  mention  the  fatal 
bottle,  even  though  this  is  called  the  outward  and  secondary  sign  of 
an  all- compelling  fate.^ 

The  evidence  that  Virgil  could  write  a  mediocre  poem  later  in  his 
career  —  at  the  time  when  the  Georgics  were  well  under  way  —  may 
help  us  decide  the  case  of  No.  9.    This  is  a  panegyric  of  Messalla,  in 

^  See  Servius  on  Ed.  9,  7. 

*  Birt,  p.  67,  allows  for  this  possibility. 

'  E.  g.  9  and  46.    This  point  is  well  made  by  Sommer,  p.  84. 

*  See  Birt,  pp.  67  ff.  '  Ibid., -p.  132. 

*  Birt  makes  the  tone  more  cheerful  still  by  discovering  a  Centaur  in  v.  2. 
Starting  with  an  epigram  of  Callimachus,  imitated  here,  which  has  the  Centaur 
(Jipa  t6  Kol  Kkin-avpov;  6  hm  irtrpwuipos  (rrvot  \  ^Xfley,  6  di  rX'fifiup  oIpos  ixa  Tp6<f>cunv.), 
Birt  gets  dicunt  Centaurum  out  of  dicunt  {dicuntur  AR)  animo  {anitni  B).  This  is 
a  clever  misuse  of  ingenuity,  at  which  both  Palaeography  and  Quellenforschung 
might  be  expected  to  nod  approval.  Birt  is  so  fascinated  with  his  centaur,  that 
he  thinks  (pp.  127,  132)  that  Horace  in  Carm.  i,  18  and  Virgil  elsewhere  have  the 
present  passage  in  mind.  However,  I  believe  that  the  Urbinas  has  the  right  read- 
ing, whether  or  not  by  conjecture,  a  nitnio. 


138  Edward  Kennard  Rand 

honor  either  of  his  triumph  over  the  Aquitanians  in  27  B.C.,  or  of  the 
general  triumph  of  Octavian,  in  which  Messalla  shared,  celebrated 
after  the  battle  of  Actium  in  31.  At  the  time,  then,  Virgil  was  either 
just  finishing  the  Georgics  or  beginning  the  Aeneid.  Messalla,  as  we 
shall  later  see,^  had  been  interested  in  Virgil's  early  work.  Virgil,  like 
Horace,  though  specially  of  the  circle  of  Maecenas,  was  not  thereby 
debarred  from  friendship  with  other  patrons  of  Uterature.  Horace 
made  Messalla  the  fine  gift  of  his  best  convivial  ode,  0  note  mecum 
consule  Manlio}  Virgil  contributed  the  present  piece,  a  distinctly 
mediocre  affair,  such  as  great  poets  sometimes  produce  when  writing 
from  a  sense  of  duty.  And  yet  there  are  touches  of  the  real  Virgil  in 
the  poem,  particularly  in  the  neat  compliment  to  MessaUa's  Greek 
pastorals,  which  the  poet  describes  with  a  reminiscence  of  his  own.^ 
The  poem  begins  with  the  acclamation  of  the  victor  and  the  praise  of 
his  literary  achievements.  There  follows  the  praise  of  his  heroine, 
who  is  likened  to  various  mythological  prototypes.  Instead  of  re- 
coimting  the  victor's  miUtary  exploits,  the  poet  passes  them  by  in  a 
tiresome  series  of  rhetorical  questions.  Such  deeds  are  too  magnifi- 
cent for  him  to  laud;  they  speak  for  themselves.  Enough  for  the 
poet  if  he  can  shed  adequate  praise  on  the  hero's  poetical  triumphs: 

Hoc  satis  est:  pingui  nil  mihi  cum  populo. 

The  piece  ends  thus  abruptly,  in  a  somewhat  Pindaric  manner.*  It 
follows  in  general  the  rules  laid  down  for  encomia  in  the  rhetorical 
treatise  Ad  Herennium.^  The  poet  evidently  approached  his  task 
with  about  the  amount  of  immediate  inspiration  that  writers  of  Pin- 
daric odes  in  EngHsh  poetry  have  possessed.  Bows  from  the  poet 
laureate  to  the  victor  laureate  are  apt  to  be  formal.  The  reason  that 
Virgil  has  written  admirable  carmina  iussa  in  some  of  the  Bucolics  and 
the  Georgics  is  that  those  really  are  not  ordered  but  spring  from  the 
heart.  No  poet  can  write  by  compulsion.  When  he  tries,  we  should 
not  reUeve  him  of  the  responsibiUty  for  the  result.  Our  verdict 
should  be,  "  A  pity  that  he  had  to  do  it,"  not  "  It  is  the  work  of 

»  See  below,  pp.  147,  154.  *  Carm.  3,  21. 

'  V.  17:  molliter  hie  viridi  patulae  sub  tegmine  quercus.    Cf.  Eel.  1,1. 

*  Cf.  the  ending  of  01.  3  and  Pyth.  2. 

*  Shown  by  Sommer,  p.  51. 


Young  Virgil's  Poetry  139 

somebody  else."    Scholars  have  not  questioned,  unless  in  the  school 
of  Peerlkamp,  that  Horace  wrote  the  fourteenth  ode  of  Book  4.^ 

A  still  harder  poem  to  accept,  on  first  reading,  as  Virgil's  is  No.  13.^^ 
In  metre  and  matter,  this  is  an  epode.  A  certain  Lucius  has  declared 
that  our  poet,  enfeebled  by  dissipation,  can  no  longer  endure  the 
toils  of  the  sea  or  the  camp.  Virgil  describes  the  vices  of  his  critic  in 
billingsgate  so  abusive  that  it  suggests  a  literary  exercise.  We  find 
in  the  Bucolics  ribald  pastoral  invective  quite  as  violent  as  that  here 
and  on  the  same  theme.^  Virgil  had  not  served  in  the  army  or  the 
navy,  so  far  as  we  had  known,  and  his  life  had  been  singularly  pure; 
even  Suetonius  could  rake  together  only  a  few  dubious  items  for  the 
chapter  of  scandals  with  which  he  regularly  equipped  his  biographies 
of  illustrious  men.  But  there  is  a  certain  liturgy  of  abuse,  which 
Archilochus  and  Catullus  and  Filelfo  and  Milton  well  knew,  and  which 
reheves  us  of  the  necessity  of  taking  invectives  as  historic  truth.* 
There  is  also  a  Uturgy  of  the  improper,  a  narrative  told  indecently  and 
in  order,  authorized  on  the  principle  of 

nam  castum  esse  decet  pium  poetam 
ipsum,  versiculos  nihil  necesse  est.' 

*  Birt,  pp.  91  ff.  and  Sommer,  pp.  37  ff.  attempt  an  elaborate  proof  that  the 
poem  is  not  Virgil's.  I  agree  vdth  P.  Jahn  in  his  review  of  Sommer  (Berl.  Phil. 
Woch.  191 1,  1397  flf.)  that  if  the  rest  of  the  Catalepton  can  be  accepted,  there  is  no 
good  reason  for  leaving  out  No.  IX.  Sommer,  indeed,  has  furnished  (pp.  44  ff.) 
a  useful  list  of  coincidences  between  it  and  Catullus,  Ctdex,  Ciris  and  the  undoubted 
works  of  Virgil.  This  evidence,  some  of  which  had  already  been  collected  by  Naeke, 
op.  cit.,  p.  233,  helps  to  put  the  poem  in  the  same  literary  setting  as  others  of  the 
CatakpUm,  and  also  to  cormect  it  with  Virgil.  Connections  with  Virgil,  in  the  case 
of  any  of  the  disputed  works  are  not  proof  of  a  later  imitation.  They  may  be  in- 
stances of  Virgil's  constant  habit  of  echoing  his  own  phrases.  Such  coincidences 
occur,  e.  g.,  in  the  Priapea,  which  Sommer  (p.  74)  accepts  as  Virgilian.  Indeed,  if  a 
work  of  any  extent  contained  none  of  them,  its  genuineness  would  be  subject  to  the 
gravest  suspicions.  Sommer  (pp.  56  ff.)  believes  that  the  Laudaiio  MessaUae 
included  in  the  Corpus  TibuUianutn  imitates  the  present  poem.  This  may  well 
be  so. 

*  Rejected  by  Sommer  (pp.  60  ff.)  mainly  becaiise  it  contradicts  what  we  know 
of  Virgil's  life.  Sommer  si>ends  most  of  his  time  in  disproving  Nemethy's  thesis 
that  the  poem  is  the  work  of  Horace. 

»  Eel.  3,  7  ff. 

*  See  Birt,  p.  142. 

'  Catullus,  16,  5  f.    See  Hack's  discussion  in  H.  S.  C.  P.,  xxv  (1914),  107  ff. 


140  Edward  Kennard  Rand 

Even  the  younger  Pliny,  the  least  libidinous  of  lovers,  bows  to  the 
custom  of  the  forefathers,  cites  a  kind  of  apostolic  succession  of  im- 
proper writers,  Virgil,  be  it  noted,  among  them,  and  with  a  splendid 
effort  of  conscience,  writes  a  naughty,  but  not  very  convincing,  poem 
himself.^  Horace  in  his  Epodes  uses  similar  autobiographical  fiction 
with  more  effect,  for  the  purpose  of  satirizing  the  third  person  in 
terms  of  the  first.  The  present  piece  might  have  been  prompted  by 
the  Epodes,  which  Virgil  doubtless  knew  considerably  before  the 
volume  appeared  in  30  B.C.;  or  perhaps  it  occurred  to  him  even  earlier, 
in  the  storm  and  stress  of  youth,  to  turn  into  an  Archilochian  epode 
the  material  of  a  Catullan  invective.  Indeed  he  had  paved  the  way 
to  such  an  achievement  in  Poems  6,  10,  and  12.  He  is  thus  a  half- 
way mark  between  Catullus  and  Horace.^  We  may  thus  credit  Virgil 
with  starting  in  Roman  literature  a  form  which  Horace  claimed  as  his 
creation,  just  as  he  called  lyric  poetry  his  own  despite  the  few  essays  of 
Catullus  with  sapphics,  and  just  as  Ovid  is  the  ultimate  author  of 
heroines'  love-letters,  though  Propertius  hit  the  idea  first. 

Further,  the  poem  may  contain  after  all  a  certain  amount  of  re- 
liable autobiography.  It  were  nothing  surprising  for  instance,  if, 
Virgil,  like  any  young  Roman,  served  for  a  while,  as  long  as  his  sickly 
constitution  permitted,  in  the  army.^  I  hardly  think  that  we  can 
venture  more  definite  conclusions.  Birt  would  fix  on  the  beginning 
of  the  Civil  War  as  the  time  of  Virgil's  campaign,  in  which  he  fought 
on  Caesar's  side.'*  A  reference  to  Caesar,  if  the  text  is  not  corrupt,^ 
would  indicate,  what  is  most  probable,  that  Virgil  was  favorably  dis- 
posed towards  Caesar;  more  we  cannot  say.  Birt  sees  reasons  ^  for 
placing  the  poem  before  No.  5,  in  which  the  poet  seems  to  cry  peccavi? 
for  the  indecency  of  just  such  a  piece  as  the  present.  If  all  this  is  so, 
No.  5  would  have  been  written  rather  late  in  Virgil's  career.* 

»  Epist.  4,  14;   5,  3;   7,  4-  *  Ibid.,  pp.  143  f. 

*  Birt,  pp.  115  f.,  151.  *  Ibid.,  p.  148. 

*  So  Birt,  p.  143.  '  Ibid.,  pp.  141,  148. 

^  Vv.  1 2  f . :  et  tamen  meas  chartas  |  revisitote,  sed  pudenier  et  raro. 

'  After  V.  16  there  suddenly  appears  in  the  inferior  branch  of  the  tradition  an 
elegiac  quatrain  of  uncertain  text  but  obvious  enough  meaning.  It  is  an  epitaph 
on  some  genius  for  whose  premature  death  the  somewhat  cold  consolation  is  offered 
that  none  is  exempt  from  fate.  This  piece  is  called  by  Vollmer  (see  his  edition  ad 
loc.)  a  humanistic  composition  on  Virgil  himself.    Birt,  however  (pp.  178  ff.),  who 


Young  VirgiVs  Poetry  141 

If  we  are  justified  in  accepting  poems  1 1  and  13  as  Virgil's  and 
thereby  assuming  that  the  Catalepton  contain  certain  pieces  com- 
posed in  poet's  later  periods  when  the  Georgics  or  even  the  Aeneid  was 
his  immediate  task,  there  is  no  antecedent  reason  for  barring  out 
No.  14.  This  is  a  prayer  to  Venus  that  she  will  grant  the  poet  strength 
to  finish  his  epic,  so  that  Trojan  Aeneas  may  ride  in  triumph  through 
the  streets  of  Rome: 

Troius  Aeneas  Romana  j)er  oppida  digno 
iam  tandem  ut  tecum  carmine  vectus  eat.* 

The  first  of  these  verses  is  made  up  of  phrases  from  the  Aeneid  and  the 
Georgics,  and  other  echoes  of  these  poems  occur.^  The  votive  offering 
will  be  not  only  incense  and  wreaths  and  a  picture,  but  a  homed  ram, 
a  mighty  bull  and  a  marble  Cupid  with  irridescent  wings.'  These  will 
be  consecrated  in  the  temple  of  Venus  on  the  Surrentine  shore.    This 

gives  a  plausible  reconstruction  of  the  text,  thinks  that  the  writer  lived  not  much 
later  than  Ovid,  and  Ribbeck  even  supposed  that  the  verses  are  part  of  Catal.  1 1 ; 
see  his  edition.  They  stood,  I  should  infer,  in  some  manuscript  from  which  the 
archetype  of  all  our  present  copies  are  derived,  at  the  head  of  a  page  that  came  after 
the  epilogue  to  the  Catalepton  (No.  1 5) .  The  scribe  turned  a  leaf  or  two  too  many, 
caught  the  quatrain  at  the  top  of  the  page,  discovered  his  error,  added  a  direction  to 
omit  or  transpose,  and  proceeded  with  the  copying  of  No.  13.  The  scribe  of  our 
archet)T)e,  or  of  some  ancestor,  copied  the  misplaced  passage  without  observing  the 
signs  of  omission  or  transposition,  and  thus  it  is  engrafted  in  the  text  of  No.  13  in 
one  branch  of  the  tradition.  The  scribe  of  B,  or  some  ancestor,  either  found  the 
signs  in  the  archetype  and  heeded  them,  or  found  them  not,  but  noting  the  incon- 
gruity of  the  verses,  boldly  left  them  out.  Thirty-nine  lines  remain  between  13,  16, 
and  the  end  of  the  Epilogue  to  the  Catalepton;  if  we  allow  two  lines  for  headings  to 
Nos.  14  and  15,  and  a  line  for  a  subscription,  we  have  forty-two,  that  is  a  leaf  with 
twenty-one  lines  on  the  page.  Possibly  not  one  but  two  or  more  leaves  were  care- 
lessly turned  by  the  scribe.  The  quatrain,  at  any  rate,  comes  from  some  collection 
that  followed  the  Catalepton.  There  is  nothing  to  show  that  it  is  by  Virgil  or  about 
him.  There  is  no  obvious  indication  of  its  date.  It  might,  perhaps,  have  been  part 
of  a  series  of  short  poems  put  together  in  the  fourth  century,  like  the  Carmina 
Vergiliana  collected  by  Baehrens  {P.  L.  N.,  iv,  156  ff.).  But  this  is  all  guesswork. 
We  may  infer  only  that  the  lines  are  probably  not  by  Virgil. 

^  For  an  admirable  translation  of  this  poem,  see  Dr.  T.  H.  Warren's  The  Death 
of  Virgil,  w.  756  S.  This  work  is  more  than  an  agreeable  exercise  in  dramatics. 
It  contains  many  fine  observations  on  Virgil's  style  and  his  temperament. 

*  See  Sommer,  pp.  68  ff. 

*  See  Birt,  p.  172. 


142  Edward  Kennard  Rand 

is  a  fine  place  for  an  offering  to  Venus,  and  one  to  which  Virgil  would 
naturally  turn  from  his  favorite  resort  at  Naples.^  Augustus,  too,  is 
pictured  as  joining  in  the  prayer.  This  language  is  appropriate  enough 
for  the  author  of  an  epic  which  immortalizes,  if  not  the  historical 
career  of  Augustus,  that  which  is  more  important  still,  the  guiding 
ideals  of  his  policy  and  of  his  times.^  We  must  remember,  too,  that 
Augustus  had  taken  a  special  interest  in  the  Aeneid,  hearing  Virgil 
read  several  books  of  it  to  him  and  begging  him  in  a  letter  to  expedite 
the  work  and  send  him  a  specimen.^  At  the  moment  when  Augustus 
wrote  this  letter,  Virgil  was  feeling  despondent  about  the  success  of 
his  epic.  He  declares  that  he  must  have  been  out  of  his  senses  when 
he  undertook  it*  —  a  remark  that  has  led  literal-minded  critics  to 
take  warning  from  Virgil's  "own  confession"  and  refrain  from  "hys- 
terical admiration  "  of  an  inferior  work.^  Ups  and  downs  of  a  writer's 
sentiment  are  inevitable  in  the  progress  of  a  great  poem  like  the 
Aeneid.  The  present  piece  gives  a  mood  of  hope,  of  that  radiant 
aspiration  towards  some  high  achievement  that  appears  often  enough 
in  Virgil.® 

A  metrical  detail  is  not  without  significance.  Though  the  poem  was 
written  at  a  time  ^  when  TibuUus  and  Propertius  had  developed  the 
style  of  pentameter,  later  perfected  by  Ovid,  in  which  a  word  longer 
than  a  dissyllable  regularly  is  not  allowed  at  the  end  of  the  verse,^  this 
rule  is  not  here  observed;  three  of  the  six  pentameters  end  in  polysyl- 
lables. This  is  a  mark  of  genuineness,  not  pace  Sommer,'  of  spurious- 
ness.  A  later  forger  who  possessed  the  inspiration  that  the  present 
piece  shows  would  have  probably  mastered  the  elegiac  technique 
observed  in  his  day.    Virgil  is  of  the  old  school.    He  wrote  Catullan 

1  Vita  Donatiana,  ed.  Brummer,  p.  3,  43;  Georg.  4,  564. 

*  Birt,  p.  170. 

3  Vita  Donat.  p.  7,105  S.;  Serviuson^m.  4,  323;  Macrobius^atom.  i,  24, 11. 

*  Macrob.  loc.  cit.:  ut  paene  vitio  mentis  tantiun  opus  ingressus  mihi  videar. 

^  Teuffel,  op.  cit.,  §228,  5.  The  remark  of  Teuffel  is  a  bit  toned  down  in  the 
recent  revision  by  Kroll  and  Skutsch. 

«  E.  g.,  Culex,  8  e.    Eel.  8,  6  ff.    Georg.  3,  8  S. 

'  Birt,  p.  172,  places  it  between  the  writing  of  Books  i  and  5  of  the  Aeneid.  At 
any  rate,  a  goodly  portion  of  the  poem  has  been  finished. 

•  See  above,  p.  132. 

•  Pp.  69  ff. 


Young  Virgil's  Poetry  143 

elegiacs  in  his  youth,  and  clung  to  this  manner  when,  for  the  nonce,  he 
later  turned  to  elegiacs  again. 

Two  poems  remain,  which  give  especially  important  clues  to  the 
development  of  Virgil's  interests  in  the  period  of  his  youth.  The  first 
of  these,  beheved  Virgilian  by  various  scholars  who  do  not  accept  the 
Catalepton  as  a  whole,^  is  a  boyish  farewell  to  rhetoric  and  poetry  as  the 
sterner  training  in  philosophy  under  Siro  is  in  prospect.  Virgxl's  rhe- 
torical studies  are  well  attested.  One  of  his  masters  was  Epidius.^  He 
doubtless  entered  some  rhetorical  school  when  he  came  from  Milan  to 
Rome,  round  about  the  year  52.^  The  vigor  of  this  little  poem  suggests 
the  bits  of  CatuUan  invective  in  the  Catalepton.  It  also  ushers  in  an 
important  period  in  Virgil's  youthful  career.  It  is  the  only  poem  in  the 
series,  with  perhaps  the  exception  of  No.  13,  on  which  Birts's  notes 
throw  more  darkness  than  light.  The  Varro  mentioned,  we  will  admit, 
is  hardly  the  great  Varro  or  Tarquitius  the  Etruscan  antiquary.*  But 
surely  they  are  the  lad's  teachers,  not  his  companions,  and  surely  his 
farewell  to  his  beautiful  mates  is  sincere,  not  ironical.' 

The  poetry  to  which  Virgil  bids  good-bye  —  only  a  partial  good- 
bye—  would  include  the  Culex  and  whatever  he  had  written  primarily 
under  the  spell  of  Catullus.  This  need  not  have  been  a  lengthy  period ; 
a  year  would  amply  suffice  to  explain  what  we  have  seen  in  the  Catalep- 
ton. Doubtless  there  were  other  pieces,  dashed  ofif  at  white  heat,  that 
early  disappeared  from  view  like  the  poetry  of  Calvus  and  Cinna; 
indeed  it  is  by  the  merest  chance  that  the  immortal  nugae  of  Catullus 
have  come  down  to  us.  The  word  pudenter  in  the  last  line  perhaps 
implies,*  that  Virgil  soon  repented  of  certain  performances  in  the  Ubid- 
inous  vein  scantioned  by  Catullus  and  other  predecessors.*  At  all 
events,  a  turning-point  in  his  intellectual  career  has  come. 

We  hear  of  Siro  some  years  later,  in  a  poem,  or  little  prayer,  ad- 
dressed to  the  humble  villa,  once  Siro's,  which  now  was  to  shelter 
Virgil,  his  father  and  others  of  his  family,  "  If  sadder  news  comes  from 

1  Teuffel,  §230,  5.   Schanz,  op.  cit.,  §241. 

*  Sueton.,  De  Gramm.  28.    Birt,  p.  72. 

*  I  agree  with  Sommer,  who  dates  the  present  poem  early  (though  perhaps  a  bit 
too  early,  53  B.C.)  rather  than  with  Birt  (pp.  18,  72),  who  thinks  it  shortly  pre- 
ceded No.  8,  which  he  assigns  to  the  year  41. 

*  See  Birt,  p.  73.  •  Above,  p.  140,  note  7. 

'  Ihid.,  p.  74.  ^  Above,  p.  139;  Birt,  p.  72. 


144  Edward  Kennard  Rand 

my  native  town."  The  circumstances  suggest  either  the  year  43,  after 
the  battle  of  Mutina,  or  ^  41,  after  Philippi.  The  poet  writes  presum- 
ably from  Rome,  at  least  from  some  place  not  Mantua.^  Wherever 
the  little  villa  was,^  its  philosophical  owner  had  found  it,  as  Horace 
found  his  Sabine  farm,  stocked  with  that  abiding  wealth  which  the 
young  author  of  the  Culex  had  praised.*  Whether  Virgil  and  his  family 
actually  had  recourse  to  this  villa,  we  do  not  know.  At  all  events,  this 
little  poem  gives  us  autobiographical  facts  concerning  Virgil,  quite 
different  from  the  ideal  presentation  of  a  general  situation  which  suits 
the  art  of  the  Bucolics.  Various  critics  from  Servius  on  have  come  to 
grief  in  the  attempt  to  extract  from  the  Bucolics  by  that  dangerous  in- 
strument, allegorical  interpretation,  a  coherent  account  of  Virgil's  own 
experience  during  the  unhappy  period  of  demobilization  at  Mantua.^ 
The  Catalepton  closes  with  an  epilogue  which  obviously  is  not  by 
Virgil  himself. 

Vate  Syracosio  qui  dulcior  Hesiodoque 

maior,  Homereo  non  minor  ore  fuit, 
illius  haec  quoque  sunt  divini  elementa  poetae 

et  rudis  in  vario  carmine  Calliope. 

If  Varius  or  Tucca,  Virgil's  literary  executors,  did  not  write  this  envoy, 
some  other  expert  did,  who  knew  that  *  sweet '  was  a  favorite  word 
with  Theocritus,^  and  that  Virgil's  temperament  was  epic.  The  four- 
teenth poem  has  the  right  ring,  but  otherwise  there  are  no  conspicu- 
ously epic  notes  in  the  Catalepton;  this  quatrain  must  have  stood  at 
the  end  of  a  collection  that  contained  more  than  the  Catalepton.  We 
have  detected  the  flavor  of  epic  in  the  Culex  here  and  there  —  it  will 
appear  again  in  others  of  the  minor  works.^ 

^  So  Birt,  p.  86.    Sommer,  p.  29,  calls  the  date  42. 

2  Birt,  p.  86. 

*  Possibly  Naples,  or  North  Italy.    Birt,  p.  86. 

*  Cf.  V.  2  with  Culex  58-97.    See  Birt,  p.  88. 

*  For  excellent  remarks  on  this  subject,  see  Birt,  pp.  86  £f. 
«  So  Aulus  Gellius,  Noct.  Ait.  9,  9.    Birt,  p.  175. 

^  Birt,  pp.  8  f.,  believes  that  the  quatrain  was  added  by  Varius  and  Tucca,  and 
that  as  it  applies  only  to  the  Catalepton,  it  shows  that  Virgil's  literary  executors  did 
not  think  that  he  wrote  the  other  minor  poems  ascribed  to  him.  This  conclusion 
is  dangerous,  not  only  because  of  the  absence  of  the  epic  element  in  the  Catalepton, 
but  because  the  collection  contains  several  pieces  (at  least  9,  11,  and  14),  which 


Young  Virgil's  Poetry  145 

IV 

CiRTS 

It  was  the  fame  of  Siro,  we  have  seen,  that  decided  young  Virgil  to 
renounce  the  Muses  and  to  take  up  serious  thinking.  Siro  came  to 
Rome  in  50  B.C./  a  date  that  fits  in  well  with  the  story  of  Virgil's  early 
career  as  we  have  deduced  it  thus  far.  If  the  latter  came  down  from 
Milan  in  52,  he  would  have  had  two  years  in  which  to  study  rhetoric 
and  to  run  the  gamut  of  Catullan  emotions  and  themes;  he  would  be 
quite  ready  to  turn  to  something  new.  The  Vita  by  Probus,  which  I 
think  certain  scholars  are  a  bit  too  prone  to  set  aside  ,^  marks  out  a 
brief  scientific  or  philosophic  period  in  Virgil's  development.  Vixit 
pluribus  annis,  this  document  declares,^  liberali  in  otio,  secutus  Epicuri 
sectam,  insigni  concordia  et  familiaritate  usus  Quintili,  Tuccae  et  Vari. 
His  associates  are  Tucca  and  Varius  as  before,  and  likewise  Quintilius 
—  apparently  Quintilius  Varus,  who  on  the  testimony  of  Horace,*  was 
one  of  the  dearest  of  Virgil's  friends.  There  is  also  a  tantalizing  frag- 
ment in  one  of  the  Herculaneum  rolls,  which  makes  it  possible  that 
Virgil  with  Quintihus  and  Varius  were  among  the  pupils  of  Philode- 
mus.^  Young  Romans  attended  the  lectures  of  both  these  authorities 
on  Epicureanism.  Cicero,  though  never  won  by  that  school,  rever- 
enced these  leaders,  whom  he  calls  his  friends,  as  fine  men  and  learned 

cannot  be  called  youthful  works.  If,  on  the  other  hand,  the  quatrain  was  appended 
to  a  collection  containing  also  Culex,  Ciris,  Aetna,  Copa,  and  Dirae,  the  proportion 
of  later  p)oems  becomes  insignificantly  small  and  the  general  designation  of  the 
pieces  as  elementa  is  justified.  Vollmer  (in  his  edition,  p.  142)  and  Sommer  (pp. 
i2flF.),  regard  the  poem  as  late  —  fourth  century,  according  to  the  latter  —  and 
as  intended  for  a  volume  containing  more  than  the  Catalepton.  The  hypothesis 
might  be  entertained  —  I  can  contribute  nothing  new  in  its  favor  —  that  Varius 
and  Tucca  added  the  epilogue  to  the  collection  of  minor  poems  named  in  the  ancient 
Vita.  If  so,  the  Catalepton  stood  last  in  the  series.  Such  an  arrangement  would  be 
chronologically  appropriate,  since  the  Catalepton  includes,  besides  very  early 
pieces,  the  latest  specimens  of  Virgil's  occasional  verse. 

1  Birt,  pp.  17,  72. 

'  For  a  list  of  discussions,  see  Teuffel,  op.  cit.,  §301,  6,  5. 

'  Brummer,  Vitae  Vergilianae,  p.  73,  10.  This  statement  is  supported  by 
Servius  (Donatus)  on  Ed.  6,  3 :  nam  vidt  exequi  sectam  Epicuream,  quam  didicerant 
tarn  Vergilius  quam  Varus  docente  Sir  one.    See  also  on  Aen.  6,  264. 

*  Carm.  i,  24.  *  Birt,  p.  17. 


146  Edward  Kennard  Rand 

thinkers.^  But  even  without  the  help  of  Herculaneum  or  of  the  Vita 
by  Probus,  we  are  sure  from  the  evidence  of  Catalepton  5  and  the  pro- 
found study  of  Lucretius  which  Culex,  Bucolics  and  Georgics  cumu- 
latively show,  that  Virgil  had  at  some  time  steeped  himself  in  Epicu- 
rean lore.  We  need  no  further  proof,  either,  that  he  lived  on  intimate 
terms  with  Varius,  Tucca  and  Quintilius. 

At  first  reading,  the  Ciris  seems  curiously  unlike  Virgil.  It  is  hard  to 
understand,  particularly  as  the  manuscript  tradition  is  so  bad.  The 
text  descends  by  the  same  line  by  which  the  Catalepton  has  reached  us, 
save  that  the  Bruxellensis,  the  main  support  of  that  work,  fails  us  in 
the  Ciris,  except  for  eighty-eight  verses  at  the  end  of  the  poem.  For 
the  rest  of  it,  only  the  inferior  branch  is  represented;  what  that  loss 
means,  we  can  see  by  noting  certain  errors  of  that  branch  that  the 
Bruxellensis  clears  away  in  the  small  portion  of  text  in  which  it  is  pre- 
served.2  Doubtless  the  whole  poem  would  seem  far  more  VirgiUan  if 
we  could  establish  its  text  as  well  as  that  of  the  Bucolics  or  even  of  the 
Culex.  For  external  evidence,  besides  the  statement  in  the  Vita  Dona-- 
tiana,  a  comment  in  the  enlarged  Servius  (Donatus),^  vouches  for  the 
Virgilian  authorship  of  the  piece.* 

The  difficulty  of  ascribing  the  poem  to  Virgil  is  further  diminished 
if  we  assume  that  it  was  written  at  the  beginning  of  the  scientific 
period  in  the  poet's  career.*  For  the  young  author  of  this  piece,  though 

*  De  Fin.  2,  119:  Familiares  nostros,  credo,  Sironem  dicis  et  Philodemum, 
cum  optimos  viros,  turn  homines  doctissimos.    Cf.  Ad.  Fam  6,  11,  2. 

2  E.  g.,  470,  472,  481,  511,  530,  533.  Both  branches  are  of  value,  for  B  has  its 
own  errors  and  shows  the  presence  of  the  gloss;  cf.  522. 

^  Eel.  6,  3.  Servius  interprets  cum  canerem  reges  et  proelia  as  referring  to  the 
Aeneid  or  to  gesta  regum  Albanorum.  He  omits  the  further  suggestions  of  "Do- 
natus,"  of  which  the  first  is:  alii  Scyllatn  eutn  scribere  coepisse  dicunt,  in  quo  libra 
Nisi  et  Minois,  regis  Cretensium,  bellutn  describebat. 

*  Of  recent  writers,  VoUmer,  op.  cit.  (followed  by  de  Gubematis,  op.  cit.),  and 
A.  B.  Drachmann  (in  Nordisk  Tidsskrift  for  Filologi,  Tredie  Raekke,  xiii  (1904), 
65  ff.;  also  Hermes,  xliii  (1908),  405  ff.)  accept  the  poem  as  Virgil's.  Drachmann's 
studies  strike  me  as  the  best  yet  written  on  the  subject.  P.  Jahn  (Rhein.  Mus.  Ixiii 
(1907),  79  ff.),  who  discusses  more  coincidences  with  other  poets  than  anybody  had 
thought  worth  collecting  before,  inclines  to  regard  Virgil  as  the  author.  The 
literature  of  the  controversy  reopened  by  Skutsch  is  given  in  Teuffel,  §  230,  2. 
Naeke,  pp.  235  ff.,  agrees  on  the  early  character  {antiqua  simplicitas)  of  the  poem, 
puts  it  before  the  Bucolics,  but  does  not  decide  for  either  Gallus  or  Virgil  as  its 
author.    On  Schrader,  see  above,  p.  105. 


Young  VirgiVs  Poetry  147 

a  stranger  to  the  task  of  philosophic  exposition/  is  devoutly  attached 
to  the  garden  of  Epicurus.  He  has  already  done  some  worshipping  of 
the  Muses,  and  would  like  to  make  the  present  work  an  ultimate  fare- 
well to  poetry.^  He  scorns  the  prizes  of  the  fickle  mob  and  craves 
above  all  things  the  fame  of  a  philosopher.  He  would  look  down 
on  the  passing  show  from  a  Lucretian  ivory  tower,*  which  rests 
in  a  more  eclectic  fashion  than  Lucretius  would  have  approved, 
on  the  pillars  of  the  four  ancient  schools.'  Philosophy  is  a  haven 
of  refuge  to  him,  as  to  the  youth  who  wrote  the  fifth  poem  of  the 
Catalepton*  FeeUng,  however,  that  his  scientific  powers  need  develop- 
ment, he  will  for  the  moment  give  his  patron,  the  young  and  yet 
learned  Messalla,*  the  best  that  he  has : 

interdum  ludere  nobis 
et  gracilem  molli  liceat  pede  claudere  versum.' 

Perhaps  a  day  will  come  when  he  can  adorn  a  larger  page  with  science 
—  naturae  rerum  magnis  intexere  chartis?  This  is  the  same  mood  of 
hopeful  prophecy  that  we  have  noted  as  characteristic  of  Virgil.' 
Meanwhile  the  humbler  Muses  have  returned  to  him  —  pudenter  — 
as  he  had  anticipated. 

Now  for  the  poem.  It  is  no  impromptu  affair;  it  may  not,  like 
Cinna's  Smyrna,  be  a  nine-years'  pondered  lay,  but  it  at  least  has  cost 
much  burning  of  the  midnight  oil."  The  theme  is  the  story  of  Scylla's 
unhallowed  passion  for  her  country's  enemy  Minos,  which  led  her  to 
cut  from  her  father's  head  the  sacred  purple  lock  on  which  the  safety 

*  Vv.  42  f. :  sed  quoniam  ad  tantas  nxinc  primum  nasdmus  artes,  |  nunc  primum 
teneros  firmamus  robore  nervos.    Aries  cannot  refer  to  poetry;  see  w.  10  f. 

*  We  noted  at  the  end  of  Catal.  9  the  same  philosophic  despite  of  the  vulgar 
herd. 

»  Vv.  17  ff. 

*  Vv.  8  flf.,  Birt  should  add  to  his  note  (p.  76)  on  philosophy  as  a  haven,  the 
eloquent  passage  in  Cic.  Tiisc.  5,  5. 

'  Vv.  36,  54. 

*  V.  20.  The  phrasing  runs  pretty  close  to  that  of  Culex  35  f.:  mollia  sed  tenui 
pede  currere  cannina,  versu  |  viribus  apta  suis  Phoebo  duce  ludere  gaudet. 

^  Vv.  36  ff. 

'  See  above,  p.  142,  note  6. 

*  Vv.  46  f . 


148  Edward  Kennard  Rand 

of  the  city  depended.  The  young  poet  soberly  rejects  the  legend  of 
that  other  Scylla  whom  poets  often  declare 

Candida  succinctam  latrantibus  inguina  monstris 
Dulichias  vexasse  rates  et  gurgite  in  alto 
deprensos  nautas  canibus  lacerasse  marinis.^ 

These  lines  suddenly  arouse  a  Virgilian  feeling  in  the  mind  of  the 
reader;  they  are  either  a  copy  or  the  model  of  a  familiar  passage  in  the 
Bucolics?  The  poet  remarks,  with  a  certain  wit,  that  neither  Horner^ 
who  preserves  the  yarn,  nor  Ulysses  who  tells  it,  has  the  best  reputa- 
tion for  veracity.^  At  most,  it  is  a  fable  of  vicious  passion,  which  the 
author  expounds  in  the  manner  of  Lucretius  and  with  Lucretius's 
interest  in  allegorical  explanation,*  lending  a  temporary  reality  to  the 
myth  which  he  would  destroy.^  He  likewise  shows  a  Virgilian  sym- 
pathy with  the  unhappy  subject  of  the  uncanny  tale.^  Nor  should  we 
be  surprised  at  finding  here  a  peculiar  estimate  of  the  story  of  Scylla 
that  Virgil  does  not  give  elsewhere;  for  his  accounts  elsewhere  are  not 
consistent.  In  the  Culex,  he  had  the  Homeric  version.  In  the  Bucol- 
ics, he  fuses  the  two  legends,  and  declares  that  it  is  the  very  daughter 
of  Nisus  who  became  the  sea-monster;  the  reason  may  be  that  having 
to  tell  of  Philomel  also,'  he  cannot  twice  describe  how. a  maiden  was 

^  Vv.  59-61. 

*  Eel.  6,  75  ff. :  Candida  succinctam  latrantibus  inguina  monstris  |  Dulichias 
vexasse  rates  et  gurgite  in  alto,  |  a !  timidos  nautas  canibus  lacerasse  marinis. 

*  Sed  neque  Maeoniae  patiuntur  credere  chartae  |  nee  malus  istorum  dubiis 
erroribus  auctor.  Surely  malus  auctor  must  refer  to  Ulysses  and  not  to  Neptune 
(so  Sillig)  or  Homer  himseK  (so  Forbiger  ad  loc,  Skutsch,  Aus  Vergils  FriihzeU, 
p.  88,  and  Linforth,  Am.  Journ.  Philol.,  xxvii  (1906),  440  f .).  Istorum  means  "  such 
tales  as  this,"  and  dubiis  erroribus  is  a  paraphrase  of  iroXOirXayKTos,  with  the  im- 
plication that  most  of  Ulysses's  travels  took  place  in  his  imagination.  Such  criti- 
cism of  Homer  is  as  old  as  Pindar,  Nem.  7,  20  ff.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  Homer  has 
himself  answered  this  particular  criticism  of  Pindar  in  Od.  11,  543. 

*  See  his  elaborate  accoimt  of  the  inner  meanings  of  the  rite  of  Cybele  (2, 600  ff .) 
and  of  the  punishments  of  noted  villians  in  Hades  (3,  977  ff.) 

^  Lucretius's  Phaethon  (5,  396  ff.)  is  quite  as  real  as  Ovid's  {Met.  2  ff.).  Just 
so  here,  the  scientifically  impossible  Scylla  seems  very  much  alive. 

^  V.  71 :  infelix  virgo,  quid  enim  commiserat  ilia  ?  Also  81  f.  Similarly  Virgil  of 
the  unhappy  Pasiphae  {Ed.  6,  47,  52):  a,  virgo  infelix,  etc. 

^  Vv.  78  ff.  See  Skutsch,  i,  99.  If  as  Skutsch  thought  (p.  no),  Virgil  compliments 
Gallus  in  this  passage  by  borrowing  the  latter's  lines,  why  should  he  go  out  of  his 


Young  Virgil's  Poetry  149 

transformed  into  a  bird.  He  therefore  varies  —  artistic  freedom  is  as 
natural  in  the  Bucolics  as  scientific  exactness  is  in  the  present  poem.^ 
In  the  Georgics,^  Scylla  is  the  bird  once  more,  but  in  the  Aeneid,  the 
monster;'  Virgil  could  alter  his  treatment  of  the  legend  to  suit  his 
varying  purpose.  So  could  Ovid.  He,  too,  now  merges  the  Scyllas 
into  one,  and  now  presents  them  separately.*  We  may  not  infer,  there- 
fore, that  the  Ciris  is  not  the  work  of  Virgil  because  he  here  condemns 
the  version  of  the  myth  that  he  elsewhere  accepts. 

There  is  another  reason  besides  scientific  propriety  that  induces  the 
writer  to  choose  his  Scylla  with  care.    Indeed  strict  science,  after  all, 
cannot  be  his  concern,  for  the  metamorphosis  of  a  maiden  into  a  bird 
I  is  not  more  naturaUstic  than  her  assimaption  of  a  girdle  of  barking  sea- 

dogs.  The  poet  wants  to  be  as  scientific  as  he  can  —  he  also  wants  to 
throw  his  subject  into  high  rehef .  So  he  feels  about  for  it,  blocking  out 
his  terrain  and  designating  the  parts  that  he  is  not  going  to  touch  it;  it 
is  a  sort  of  praeteritio,  of  which  other  poets,  too,  can  furnish  examples.* 
After  a  brief  invocation  of  the  Pierides,  the  poet  is  ready  for  the 
story,  which  he  tells  with  a  firm  dignity  and  a  certain  mystic  wonder, 
of  which  the  exclamations  over  the  metamorphosis  of  Scylla  are 
typical,'  and  to  which  the  sixty-fourth  poem  of  Catullus  presents  the 
nearest  parallel.^  Despite  occasional  roughness  in  verse  and  phrasing, 
the  poem  is  a  noteworthy  success.  Scylla  deserves  a  place  with  the 
characters  of  tragedy.  The  moment  when  her  old  nurse  overtakes  her, 
in  the  act  of  stealing  by  night  to  her  father's  chamber  in  quest  of  the 
fatal  lock,  is  full  of  tragic  feeling.*    Despite  the  horror  of  the  deed,  we 

•way  to  present  a  view  of  Scylla  that  his  friend  had  branded  as  false  ?    It  is  more 
likely  that  Virgil  treated  thus  cavalierly  an  earlier  poem  of  his  own. 

*  Lucretius  (s,  892)  had  scoffed  at  the  canine  Scylla  as  a  scientific  impossibility. 

*  I,  404  ff.  »  3,  420  ff. 

*  In  Am.  3, 1 2,  21  ff.,  the  two  Scyllas  are  combined  exactly  as  in  Eel.  6.  The  bird- 
story  appears  in  Mel.  8,  91;  Rem.  67;  Trist.  2,  393.  The  monster-story  appears  in 
Her.  12,123;  Am.  2, 11,18;  Afc/.  13,  730, 967;  14,18;  Ex  Pont.  $,1,122;  4,10,25. 
In  A.  A.  1,  331  the  couplet  of  Am.  3,  12,  21  is  repeated. 

•  E.  g.,  Horace  Carm.  3,  11;  3,  27.    Ovid.  Met.  4,  43  ff. 

•  Vv.  19s  ff. 

'  Cf.  Catullus's  apostrophe  of  the  age  of  heroes,  vv.  22  ff, 

•  Ovid  appreciated  the  tragic  element  in  the  story,  whether  he  found  it  in  our 
poem  or  elsewhere.  See  Trist.  2,  393:  Impia  nee  tragicos  tetigisset  Scylla  co- 
thumos,  I  ni  patrium  crinem  desecuisset  amor. 


150  Edward  Kennard  Rand 

have  the  sense  of  some  uncanny  destiny  that  overrules  poor  mortals 
and  occasions  part  at  least  of  their  guilt  —  crudeles  vos  quoque  superi. 
A  touch  of  this  idea,  we  saw,  was  present  in  the  earUest  of  Virgil's 
works.^ 

As  a  whole,  the  epyllion  of  Ciris  is  in  the  manner  of  Catullus  and 
his  contemporaries.  It  also  shows  some  of  their  minor  traits  of  versifi- 
cation and  language,  such  as  spondaic  lines  and  diminutive  adjectives.'^ 
Some  of  its  very  crudities  are  explained  by  its  Neo-Alexandrian  char- 
acter,^ Taken  with  the  Catalepton,  it  gives  evidence  of  a  thorough- 
going emulation  of  the  two  varieties  of  Catullus's  work,  the  JSlugae  and 
the  longer  poems.^  No  touch  of  his  wistful  romanticism  the  yearning 
for  a  golden  age,  appears;  its  nearest  approach  is  the  sense  of  wonder 
and  mystery.  The  laments  of  Scylla  and  Carme  are  inferior  in  pathos 
to  that  of  Ariadne  in  Catullus,  but  the  tragic  element  gives  the  Ciris  a 
peculiar  intensity  which  the  latter  wholly  lacks.  Virgil  entered  the 
lists  against  his  master  another  time,  when  in  his  story  of  Dido  he  again 
transformed  pathos  into  tragedy.  A  dim  prophecy  of  this  achievement 
is  given  in  the  present  poem. 

^  See  above,  p.  118,  note  7. 

*  Admirably  shown  by  Skutsch,  i,  64  ff.,  ii,  19  ff.  The  massing  of  adjectives 
and  participles  about  a  single  noim  still  occurs.  Cf.  v.  3  with  Catullus,  64, 
87. 

'  For  certain  details,  see  VoUmer,  Sitzungsherichte,  etc.  (1907),  pp.  359  ff.  One 
noticeable  peculiarity  is  the  frequent  use  of  compound  sentences,  in  which  the 
cbordinate  elements  often  form  a  lengthy  chain.  Thus  in  Catullus,  64,  19  ff.,  three 
lines  begin  with  Turn,  each  containing  a  main  verb  near  or  at  the  end  of  the  line. 
In  a  stretch  of  eleven  verses  (32-42),  there  are  no  less  than  fourteen  main  verbs, 
with  no  subordinate  clauses.  So  in  Ciris,  w.  29-32,  four  main  verbs  follow  one 
another  in  as  many  lines,  the  first  three  being  in  exactly  the  same  position  in  the 
verse.  In  a  passage  of  nine  lines  (459-467),  there  are  seven  main  verbs.  In  vv. 
387-390,  there  are  three  main  verbs  with  Turn  at  the  beginning  of  three  of  the 
lines,  the  whole  passage  being  obviously  modelled  on  Catullus,  64,  19  ff.  When 
Virgil  turned  to  this  poem  later,  with  a  far  different  purpose  in  mind,  it  is  not  sur- 
prising that  he  should  again  exhibit  this  trait  of  style.  The  oracular  character  of 
the  Fourth  Eclogue  makes  short,  coordinate  sentences  appropriate. 

*  The  most  apparent  reminiscences  of  Catullus  are  noted  in  Vollmer's  edition. 
To  specify  one  detail,  the  lament  of  Carme,  vv.  283  ff.,  and  that  of  Scylla,  vv. 
404  ff.,  represent  a  t6toj  natural  enough  after  Ariadne's  lament  in  Catullus  64, 
132  ff.  For  all  that,  the  coloring  of  these  passages  is  also  a  kind  of  prophecy  of  the 
pastoral  lament  in  Virgil's  eighth  Eclogue.     Cf.  Ciris  302,  and  Buc.  8,  59. 


Young  Virgil's  Poetry  151 

Another  prophecy  of  the  later  Virgil  consists  in  the  identity  of 
phrases,  lines,  and  passages  with  portions  of  the  Bucolics,  the  Georgics, 
and  the  Aeneid.  These  are  so  extensive  that  many  believe  the  Ciris  is 
a  later  imitation,  in  places  ahnost  a  cento,  from  these  works  of  Virgil.^ 
And  yet  the  piece  seems  clearly  of  the  school  of  Catullus.  It  is  hardly 
conceivable  that  some  belated  admirer  of  the  late  Republican  poets 
wrote  it  toward  the  end  of  the  Augustan  period,  incidentally  making 
large  appropriations  from  poetry  of  a  different  sort.^  It  is  curious  that 
he  should  plunder  Virgil  in  this  wholesale  fashion,  but  borrow  from 
Catullus  and  Lucretius  in  the  skiKuUy  allusive  manner  in  which  Virgil 
treated  his  predecessors.^  The  perplexities  raised  by  this  hypothesis 
are  cleared  away  by  the  testimony  of  tradition.  The  poem  belongs  to 
the  earher  period,  —  and  it  is  by  Virgil  himself.  To  see  how  a  later 
Augustan  used  the  same  material,  we  can  turn  to  Ovid's  story  of 
Scylla,  or  of  Byblis,  or  of  Myrrha,*  where  dapper  rhetoric  and  an 
expert  mastery  of  pathological  impossibilities  replace  the  sober  and 
somewhat  archaic  art  of  Catullus  and  the  author  of  the  Ciris;  tech- 
nique has  developed  and  grandeur  disappeared  as  in  Bernini's  sculpture 
after  that  of  Giovanni  Pisano.  Virgil  could  plunder  the  Ciris,  for  he 
was  plundering  his  own,  and  in  most  cases  improving  what  he  took. 
We  do  not  need  the  ingenious,  but  unsupported,  theory  revived  by 
Skutsch  ^  and  favored  by  Mackail  *  that  Ciris  is  wholly  or  in  part  the 

^  The  most  important  coincidences  are  noted  in  Vollmer's  edition.  See  also 
Sitzungsberichte,  etc  (1907),  p.  362.  These  coincidences  are  not  confined  to  the 
Bucolics,  Georgics,  and  Aeneid.  For  instance,  cf.  Culex,  385,  and  Ciris,  340;  Cata- 
lepton,  3,  5,  and  Ciris,  291.  On  Ciris  and  Catalepton,  see  Sommer,  op.  cit.,  pp.  48  f, 
104,  106;  Drackmann,  Hermes,  xliii,  425;  P.  Jahn,  Rhein.  Mus.,  bdii,  100.  On 
the  use  of  the  name  "  Hellespont,"  in  the  sense  of  "  Aegean,"  see  G.  Jachmann, 
Rhein.  Mus.,  bcs  (1916),  640;  it  is  found  in  both  Culex  and  Ciris. 

*  The  priority  of  the  Ciris,  I  believe,  has  been  conclusively  shown  by  Skutsch, 
i,  61  ff.,  105  ff.;   ii,  4  ff.,  and  Drachmann  in  Nordisk  Tidsskrift  loc.  cit.,  65  flf. 

*  A  point  admirably  made  by  Drachmann,  loc.  cit. 

*  Met.  8,  I ;  9,  450;   10,  298. 

'  See  above,  pp.  104  f.  The  bit  of  external  evidence  with  which  Skutsch  starts 
is  Servius's  remark  on  Eel.  10,  46:  hi  aulem  omnes  versus  Galli  sunt,  de  ipsins  trans- 
lati  carminibus.  Obviously  Virgil  is  quoting  a  certain  amount  from  Gallus.  How 
much  is  covered  by  hi  omnes  versus  it  is  arbitrary  to  say.  Callus's  elegiacs  would 
have  to  be  refashioned  in  any  case.  Suggestive  reminiscences  there  may  be  in  all 
parts  of  Callus's  speech,  but  the  problem  of  this  eclogue  is  not  solved  by  calling 


152  Edward  Kennard  Rand 

work  of  Gallus,  to  whom  Virgil  paid  the  compliment  of  constant  bor- 
rowing. But  Virgil  also  borrowed,  with  utter  freedom,  from  his  own 
works,  from  the  Bucolics  in  the  Georgics  and  from  both  of  these  poems 
in  the  Aeneid} 

The  mystery  of  the  Ciris  vanishes  if  we  recognize  that  it  marks  an 
ebullient  and  unsettled  period  in  its  author's  career.  Of  course,  then, 
its  style  and  its  very  metre  differ  both  from  what  he  had  previously 
done  and  from  what  he  was  later  to  do.^  He  is  passing  consciously,  or 
trying  to  pass  into  a  new  world  of  thought  and  feeling.'    He  would 

it  a  string  of  quotations.  Its  general  meaning  is  clear,  and  the  meaning  of  vv.  44- 
45  is  clear  —  it  was  long  ago  explained  by  Servius  {ex  affedu  ibi  se  esse  putat,  ubi 
arnica  est,  ut  'me'  sit  '  meum  animutn ') .  The  piece  is  a  study  of  the  shifting 
emotions  of  a  poetic  mind,  which  finally  centres  on  its  proper  task.  It  is  a  tribute 
to  the  sincerity  of  Callus's  elegies,  and  as  noble  a  tribute  as  one  poet  ever  paid 
another.  It  is  far  removed  from  the  realm  of  "  Catalogue  Poetry."  Skutsch, 
starting  with  Servius's  comment,  follows  it  like  the  flower  in  the  crannied  wall. 
He  naturally  finds  Catalogue  Poetry  rampant  in  the  sixth  Eclogue  —  but  there  he 
is  altogether  on  the  broad  sea  of  conjecture. 

Mackail's  theory  amounts  to  a  modification  of  that  of  Skutsch.  See  his 
Lectures  on  Poetry,  p.  68. 

1  See  above,  p.  127,  note  2,  and  Drachmann,  Nordisk  Tidsskrift,  loc.  cit.,  p.  67. 

2  In  a  profitable  dissertation,  {Num  Culex  et  Ciris  Epyllia  ab  eodem  poeta 
composita  sint  quaeritur,  Giessen,  1914),  Miss  L.  C.  Eldridge  comes  to  the  con- 
clusion that  owing  to  their  differences  in  metrical  usage,  the  Ciris  and  the  Culex 
cannot  be  by  the  same  author.  But  the  divergences  are  by  no  means  fatal 
to  the  theory  that  I  am  here  presenting.  In  general,  the  Ciris  shows  greater  sure- 
ness  of  touch,  but  less  regularity.  Thus  there  are  more  elisions  allowed  than  in 
the  Culex  (p.  48).  Hiatus  appears  (p.  49),  though  absent  from  the  Culex;  one 
variety  of  hiatus,  be  it  noted,  is  especially  Virgilian  —  that  in  which  a  Greek  word 
is  involved  at  the  end  of  a  verse  (e.  g.,  474,  repeated  Aen.  3,  74:  Neptuno  Aegaeo). 
Spondaeic  lines,  not  a  feature  of  the  Culex,  are  introduced  in  Ciris  owing  to  the 
influence  of  Catullus,  and  later  again  disappear  in  Virgil  (cf.  Ciris  96:  deponunt 
flores  aut  suave  rubens  narcissus  with  Eel.  3,  63:  munera  sunt  lauri  et  suave  rubens 
hyacinthus).  The  use  of  diaeresis  in  the  two  poems  is  virtually  the  same  (pp.  50  ff.). 
They  agree  in  occasionally  permitting  diaeresis  in  the  second  foot  —  a  license  that 
later  became  anathema  to  Virgil.  Ciris  is  more  like  the  later  Virgil  than  is  Culex 
in  its  use  of  the  monosyllable  at  the  end  of  the  line  (as  may  be  gathered  from  the 
examples  cited  in  pp.  55-57).  On  the  style  in  general,  the  writer  (p.  60)  justly 
remarks,  as  Naeke  (p.  237)  had  remarked  before:  sermonem  Ciris  elegantiorem 
quam  Culicis  esse  neque  tot  locis  rudibus  atque  malis  abundare.  TTiis  is  what  we 
should  expect  if  Culex  is  the  earlier,  Ciris  the  maturer,  work. 

'  For  this  much  of  my  argument  —  no  more  —  I  may  appeal  to  Reitzenstein, 


Young  VirgWs  Poetry  153 

like  to  have  done  once  for  all  with  poetry,  to  which  he  has  been  de- 
voted in  the  past.  Giving  it  a  final  fling,  he  turns  no  longer  to  the 
models  on  which  he  had  formed  his  style  at  the  age  of  sixteen,  but  after 
an  intense  preoccupation  with  the  ideals  of  Catullus,  he  deliberately 
adapts  his  poetic  manner  to  that  of  his  new  master.^  Neo- Alexandrian 
dactyhc  hexameter  as  practised  by  Catullus  is  a  type  in  itself,  as  dis- 
tinct from  the  heroic  verse  of  Lucretius  and  the  author  of  the  Culex  as 
the  conversational  hexameter  of  Horace's  satires  is  from  the  lyric 
hexameter  of  his  odes  and  epodes.  It  is  not  more  surprising  that  Virgil 
should  have  written  both  Ctdex  and  Ciris  than  that  Horace  proved 
adept  in  different  t)^es  of  the  same  verse.  And  notwithstanding  the 
strange  atmosphere  of  dris,  continual  flashes  of  the  later  Virgil  warn 
us  that  its  manner  wiU  not  last.  These  "  VirgiUan  "  bits  consist  not 
merely  in  the  lines  and  passages  that  Virgil  incorporated,  with  or  with- 
out modification,  in  his  later  poems;  others,  likewise,  have  the  right 
swing,^  These,  indeed,  we  should  expect  to  occur  in  a  genuine  work  of 
his;  a  mere  imitator  could  not  have  invented  them.  In  a  word,  the 
Ciris  is  the  product  of  a  pecuUar  period  in  Virgil's  development.  It 
reflects  his  interest  in  science,  which,  strongest  in  his  youth,  colored 
his  temperament  throughout  his  life.    It  also  shows  how  profoimdly 

Hermes,  xlviii  (1913),  250  ff.,  who  detects  in  the  poem  the  flavor  of  a  vita  nuova,  a 
turning-point  in  a  career  (p.  255). 

1  Lucretius  is  not  altogether  forgotten  in  the  Ciris;  his  influence  appears  par- 
ticularly in  the  introduction,  where  the  poet  pledges  his  loyalty  to  science. 

'  For  a  preliminary  survey,  one  may  take  the  list  given  by  Miss  Eldridge,  op. 
ciL,  p.  60  to  Ulustrate  the  elegantior  sermo  of  the  Ciris;  it  includes  some  of  the  verses 
repeated  in  Virgil's  later  works.  Though  every  reader  prefers  his  own  selection,  the 
verses  here  cited  sufl&ce  to  prove  that  their  author  was  master  of  his  art.  One  blemish 
of  the  poem  may  also  be  noted  here,  on  account  of  its  very  Virgilian  character.  In 
describing  Scylla's  unwitting  act  of  sacrilege  at  the  cermony  in  honor  of  Juno,  the 
poet  says,  w.  142  f.:  dum  sacris  operata  deae  lascivit  et  extra  \  procedit  longe  tnatrum 
comitumque  catervam.  The  reader  is  instantly  and  unpleasantly  reminded  of  Lucre- 
tius's  unapproachable  lines  (i,  72  f.) :  ergo  vivida  vis  animo  pervicit,  et  extra  \  processil 
longe  flammantia  moenia  mundi.  There  is  a  striking  parallel  to  this  infelicity  in  the 
Aeneid.  Aeneas  greets  Dido  in  the  world  below  with  the  the  words  spoken  by 
Berenice's  lock  in  Catullus's  poem  (66,  39) :  invita  0  regina  tuo  de  vertice  cessi  {invitus 
regina  tuo  de  litore  cessi:  Aen.  6, 460) .  The  Verona  scholiast  on  Aen.  10,  557  remarks 
that  Virgil  neque  temporis  neque  loci  habet  curam  in  his  imitations.  It  may  be  that  the 
vice  of  intention  obtains  in  neither  case.  My  point  is  that  they  show  a  strikingly 
similar  defect,  whether  of  memory  or  of  taste. 


154  Edward  Kennard  Rand 

he  had  been  imbued  with  the  spirit  of  Catullus.   And  it  prophesies  the 
turn  that  his  own  genius  was  to  take. 

The  question  of  the  date  of  the  poem  remains.  As  Virgil  came  to 
Rome  about  52  b.c,  we  may  plausibly  assign  the  year  50  as  the  earliest 
appropriate  date  of  the  Ciris.  Though  the  work  was  finished  when 
science  had  taken  possession  of  him,  he  may  have  spent  part  of  his 
purely  Catullan  period  on  the  body  of  the  work.  He  may  well  have 
devoted  some  three  or  four  years  in  all  to  its  composition,  emulating 
the  careful  method  of  Helvius  Ciima  and  his  nine  years'  pondered  lay 
on  a  similar  story  of  filial  impiety.^  There  is  no  reason  why  a  poem 
could  not  have  been  dedicated  to  Messalla  in  or  about  50  B.C.  He  was 
nearly  of  Virgil's  age  at  the  time,*  and  evidently  had  given  promise  of 
the  eminence  in  oratory  and  letters  that  he  later  attained;  in  43  B.C., 
Cicero  lauds  his  eloquence  to  the  skies.'  It  is  not  necessary  to  connect 
the  poem  with  Messalla's  later  career,  for  instance  with  the  triumph 
that  he  celebrated  for  his  victory  over  the  Aquitanians  in  27  B.C.; 
indeed,  there  are  grave  objections  to  assuming  that  Virgil  wrote  a 
poem  like  the  Ciris  so  late  in  life.  That  was  not  the  time  for  a  some- 
what youthful  panegyric  of  science  —  after  the  full  flung  challenge  to 

*  The  name  of  the  nurse,  Canne,  is  taken  from  Cinna's  Smyrna,  and  there  may 
well  be  a  good  bit  of  imitation  of  that  poem  elsewhere  in  the  Ciris.  See  Heinze, 
Virgil's  Epische  Technik  (1908''),  p.  126,  note.  Virgil's  admiration  of  the  Smyrna, 
or  at  least  of  Cinna's  work  in  general,  is  obvious  from  Ed.  9,  35  f. 

*  According  to  St.  Jerome,  a  notoriously  slippery  source  on  dates,  Messalla  was 
bom  in  59  B.C.  Teuffel,  op.  cit.,  §  222  gives  the  date,  with  a  question-mark,  as  64  B.C. 
Schanz,  §  215  omits  the  question-mark.  The  date  64  B.C.  is  deduced  mainly  from 
St.  Jerome's  (likewise  uncertain)  statement  of  Messalla's  age  at  the  time  of  his  death. 
Scaliger,  in  his  note  on  St.  Jerome,  argues  for  70  B.C.  as  the  year  of  Messalla's  birth. 
Drachmann  {Nord.  Tidssk.,  loc.  cit.  p.  71)  would  assign  the  poem  to  the  year  45,  on  the 
assumption  that  Messella  was  bom  in  64.  But  he  also  feels  that  the  characteristics 
of  the  piece,  especially  in  relation  to  the  art  of  the  Bucolics,  demand  a  date  nearer  to 
50  B.C.  He  therefore  is  inclined  to  infer  that  it  is  dedicated  to  some  other  Messalla. 
I  should  prefer  to  accept,  with  Scaliger,  an  earlier  date  for  Messalla's  birth.  If  that 
fell,  let  us  say,  halfway  between  that  of  his  intimate  friends  Horace  and  Virgil,  he 
would  be  seventeen  or  eighteen  in  50  B.C.  —  not  too  young  for  the  meed  of  praise 
given  him  in  the  Ciris.  Lads  were  well  educated  in  those  days.  Virgil  wrote  his 
Culex  at  sixteen.  We  can  get  a  bit  more  leeway  by  assuming  48  B.C.  as  the  date:  I 
can  see  no  argimaents  against  it. 

'  Ad  Brutum,  i,  15,  i. 


Young  Virgil's  Poetry  155 

Lucretius  made  in  the  Georgics}  I  doubt  also  whether  at  that  time 
Virgil  would  have  felt  like  refurbishing  an  earlier  epyllion  in  his  long- 
since  discarded  Catullan  manner. 

V 
Aetna 

The  philosophical  achievement  to  which  the  poet  of  the  Ciris 
looked  forward  perhaps  Ues  before  us  in  the  Aetna.  The  Virgilian 
authorship  of  this  work  was  doubted  in  antiquity,  or  at  least  in  the 
early  Middle  Ages,  though  possibly  not  by  Donatus  himself.  Indeed, 
both  Donatus  and  Servius  may  be  cited  as  witnesses  to  the  Virgilian 
authorship.  Later  in  the  Middle  Ages,  Vincent  of  Beauvais  appears 
among  the  higher  critics.^  The  theme  of  the  poem,  the  nature  of  vol- 
canoes, does  not  appeal  to  most  modem  readers  of  Bucolics,  Georgics, 
and  Aeneid  as  Virgilian. 

We  can  at  least  limit  the  date  of  the  poem  to  the  period  between  the 
year  55  B.C.,  the  death  of  Lucretius,  whose  influence  in  the  work  is 
patent,  and  79  a.d.,  when  the  great  eruption  of  Vesuvius,  not  men- 
tioned in  the  poem,  occurred.  Almost  everybody  who  wielded  a  pen 
between  these  dates  has  been  cited  as  a  possible  author  of  the  poem  — 
Quintilius  Varus,  Cornelius  Severus,  Ovid,  Augustus,  Manilius, 
Seneca,  Lucilius  Junior,  the  elder  Pliny,  the  younger  Pliny,'  and  even 
beyond  the  bounds  of  this  period,  Claudian.*   Present  opinion  inclines 

^  Vollmer  {Sitzungsberichte,  etc.  (1907),  364  flf.)  would  conclude,  as  I  am  tempted 
to  conclude,  that  the  body  of  the  Ciris  may  have  been  written  before  the  present 
form  of  the  poem  was  finished.  But  he  would  place  the  Ciris  between  the  Bucolics 
and  the  Georgics  mamly  because  of  the  character  of  the  coincidences.  This  is 
treacherous  ground.    Vollmer  thinks  that  the  introduction  was  written  in  27  B.C. 

»  Spec.  Hist.  6,  62. 

*  By  A.  Kraemer,  Berl.  Philol.  Woch.,  1913,  139. 

*  For  a  review  of  the  diverse  opinions,  see  J.  Vessereau,  Aetna.  Paris  (1905), 
3d  S.,  XX  S.  The  starting  point  for  many  suggestions  is  a  letter  of  Seneca  to  his 
friend  Lucilius  {Epost.  79),  to  whom  Seneca  attributes  the  intention  of  writing  a 
poem  on  Aetna.  The  tone  of  the  exhortation  is  a  bit  jocose  (cf.  7:  aut  ego  te  non 
novi  aut  Aetna  tibi  salivam  movet).  Lucilius  has  been  going  the  rounds  of  Sicily, 
and  is  about  to  report  his  observations  in  a  letter  to  Seneca.  The  latter  is  anxious 
to  learn  the  truth  about  Charybdis  (i),  and  calls  likewise  for  an  investigation  of 
Aetna  (2:   Si  haec  mihi  perscripseris,  time  tibi  audebo  mandare,  ut  in  honorem 


156  Edward  Kennard  Rand 

to  an  anonymous  writer  of  the  age  of  Nero.  It  is  a  daring  act  of  heresy 
to  suggest  Virgil  once  more.  And  yet,  though  Virgil  would  hardly 
have  devoted  a  poem  to  natural  science  at  the  time  when  he  wrote  his 
later  works,  it  is  precisely  the  subject  that  would  appeal  to  him  in 
the  brief  period  when  he  had  turned  from  the  glamour  of  letters  to 
sterner  training  under  Siro  the  Epicurean.  For  Epicureans  of  the 
type  of  Lucretius  and  the  young  Virgil  were  more  interested  in  the 
physical  laboratory  than  in  roses  and  wine.^ 

The  text  of  the  poem  presents  peculiar  difficulties.  It  bristles  with 
unsolved  and  perhaps  unsolvable  problems  that  have  spurred  great 
scholars  like  Scaliger,  Munro  and  Ellis  to  heroic  deeds  of  exegesis  and 
emendation.^  Curiously,  the  manuscript  sources  are  more  abundant 
than  those  for  the  Ciris,  which,  on  the  whole,  is  an  easier  document  to 
read.  Besides  the  two  groups  of  Z,  the  younger  branch,  we  have  the 
Cantabrigiensis,  s.  X,  the  Stabulensis,  5.  X,  the  Excerpta,  s.  XI,  and 
for  lines  138-287,  the  readings  of  a  lost  manuscript  used  by  Gyraldus. 
Most  scholars  regard  this  last-named  source  as  the  most  important  of 
all  for  the  portion  for  which  it  is  preserved;  but  Ellis,  following  Alzin- 
ger,  raised  certain  doubts  not  easy  to  be  downed.^  We  are  forced,  I 
think,  to  the  conclusion  postulated  by  VoUmer,^  that  the  text  of  all  the 

meum  Aetnam  quoque  adscendas).  I  see  no  certain  proof  from  this  letter  that 
Lucilius  wrote  anything  on  Aetna.  He  was  apparently  at  work  on  some  sort  of  a 
poem  pertaining  to  Sicily,  and  Seneca  hopes  that  he  may  bring  in  Aetna  (5 :  Aetnam 
describas  in  tuo  carmine  et  hunc  solemnem  omnibus  poetis  locum  adtingas:  quem 
quo  minus  Ovidius  tractaret,  nihil  obstitit,  quod  iam  Vergilius  impleverat.  Ne 
Severum  quidem  Cornelium  uterque  deterruit) . 

1  My  idea  is  exactly  expressed  by  B.  Kruczkiewicz,  Poema  Vergilio  auctor;  po- 
tissimutn  esse  tribuendutn  demonstrabat,  in  Rozprawy  i  S prawozdania  (Univ.  of 
Cracow),  x  (1884),  155:  Ceterum  cum  etiam  in  dicendi  genere  Aetna  auctor  .  .  . 
medium  quoddam  tenet  inter  Lucretii  atque  maiora  tria  Vergilii  carmina,  facile 
adducor,  ut  credam  ipsum  Vergilium  quondam  recentis  epicurae  doctrinae  materiam 
secutum  fortius  impugnasse  fictas  illas  historias,  priusquam  aetas  uitaeque  usus 
impetum  ilium  iuuenilem  retardassent  nimiumque  studium  temperassent. 

*  See  Scaliger,  Pub.  Virgilii  Maronis  Appendix  —  In  eandem  Appendicem  Casti- 
gationes,  Leyden  (ed.  of  1595),  p.  87:  Nulli  fere  poemati  magis  nocuit,  imo,  ut  ne 
quid  dissimulem,  nulli  tantum  nocuit  vetustas. 

3  Aetna,  pp.  Ixv  ff. 

*  See  above,  pp.  iii f.  On  the  verse  of  Aetna  is  cited  in  the  Exempla  Diversorum 
Auctorum,  see  Vollmer,  Sitzungsberichte,  etc.  (1907),  349. 


Young  Virgil's  Poetry  157 

minor  poems  comes  from  a  single  book,  though  different  groupings  of 
the  works  were  later  made.  This  single  text,  furthermore,  whether  it 
was  contained  in  a  faded  ancient  codex  or  in  an  intermediate  copy 
made  in  some  puzzling  script  like  the  Irish  cursive,^  was  full  of  errors 
that  only  the  divining  art  of  conjectural  criticism  can  remove. 

The  writer  of  the  Aetna  starts  off  with  an  invocation  to  Phoebus,  not 
too  poetical  a  beginning  for  an  imitator  of  Lucretius,  who  called  Venus 
to  aid  him  in  the  building  of  his  philosophical  verse.  There  is  no  touch 
here  of  the  Augustan  significance  of  Apollo,  Octavian's  patron-saint  at 
Actium.  Apollo  is  invoked  as  leader  of  the  Muses,  whose  help  is  need- 
ful in  a  journey  on  the  higher  levels  of  thought.  But  they  must  be  sure 
of  the  direction ;  their  guide  must  lead  the  way.^  The  poet's  theme 
is  novel  and  modern  —  not  the  Golden  Age,  which  some  poets  appear 
to  know  better  than  their  own  times,  nor  any  of  the  stale  fables  which 
everyone  has  sung.  Among  these  is  included  the  tale  of  Ariadne 
abandoned  on  the  barren  shore ;  this  looks  like  a  glance  at  Catullus 
and  the  kind  of  poetry  that  the  young  philosopher  himself  had  shortly 
before  been  writing.  Such  anti-mythological  talk  might  seem  unlike 
Virgil  if  there  were  not  the  same  sort  of  thing  in  the  Culex  and  the 
Georgics?  The  tone  is  milder,  naturally,  in  these  other  passages.  He 
perhaps  would  not  later,  or  earlier,  as  here,  call  the  poet's  function  the 
dissemination  of  false  report.  Yet  Ovid  blithely  uses  a  similar  phrase,* 
and  Lucretius,  of  course,  likes  to  harp  on  the  splendid  lies  that  are  fed 

*  The  error  of  furtim  for  euri  points  to  an  archetype  in  rustic  capitals.  The 
right  reading  in  the  codex  of  Gyraldus  is  easy  for  an  intelligent  humanist  to  divine 
from  the  context.  Another  correct  reading  of  G,  likewise  easily  attained  by 
emendation,  is  unde  for  una  in  v.  220.  This  suggests  a  misinterpretation  of  a 
parent  manuscript  containing  the  insular  abbreviation  tin  for  unde.  So  far  as  I 
can  see,  the  most  plausible  lineage  to  assume  for  the  text  of  the  minor  poems,  is  (A) 
an  ancient,  and  perhaps  faded,  MS.  in  rustic  capitals;  (B)  a  copy  of  A,  in  some 
Insular  hand;   (C)  a  copy  of  B  and  the  parent  of  all  our  extant  codices. 

'  The  Virgilian  character  of  this  invocation  and  its  similarity  to  that  in  the 
Culex  has  often  been  remarked.  See  S.  Sudhaus,  Aetna.  Erklaert.  Leipzig,  (1898),  p. 
96.     The  Apollo  of  the  Culex,  as  of  the  third  Georgic,  is  the  pastoral  divinity. 

'  See  above,  p.  116,  note  i.  Incidentally,  would  anybody  have  felt  like  calling 
the  theme  of  Aetna  insolitum  in  the  age  of  Nero?  To  Seneca  it  is  sollemnis  oi>t..ii-:iS 
poetis  locus.    See  above,  p.  155,  note  4. 

*  Fasti  I,  6,  253. 


158  Edward  Kennard  Rand 

to  mankind  by  poets  and  allegorists.^  As  early  as  Solon,  in  fact,  a  poet 
could  declare  of  his  brother-bards 

ToXXa  \j/ev8ovTat,  AotSol.^ 

However,  the  poet  of  the  Aetna  seems  to  speak  out  of  the  bitterness  of 
a  new  experience;  his  words  show  the  intensity  of  a  youthful  observer 
who  has  discovered  that  the  utterances  of  Rehgion  are  not  absolute 
truth.  There  are  touches  of  a  youthful  irony  in  his  account  of  the 
myth  that  he  finds  necessary  to  tell.' 

The  subject  of  the  poem,  doubtless  inspired  by  the  sixth  book  of 
Lucretius,  is  the  real  cause  of  volcanoes.  Here  is  a  matter  in  which  the 
gods  are  not  involved,  for  free  from  sordid  cares,  they  dwell  in  the 
palaces  of  the  sky  and  mind  not  our  concerns;  the  poet,  like  Lucretius 
and  the  author  of  the  Ciris,  is  of  the  school  of  Epicurus.*  This  fact 
does  not  prevent  him  from  taking  a  large  part  of  his  science  from 
Posidonius;  ^  his  goal  is  eclectic  truth  and  not  merely  Epicurean 
theory.  The  tale  of  Vulcan  and  the  Cyclopes  and  of  the  fate  of  Encel- 
adus  in  the  battle  between  gods  and  giants  is  an  idle  affair,  our  poet 
declares.  He  takes  a  certain  pleasure  in  telling  it,  in  very  decent  verse, 
only  to  cap  the  story  with  a  vigorous  denial  of  its  veracity  — 

haec  est  mendosae  volgata  licentia  famae.* 

Most  of  the  staging  of  life,  he  continues,  is  falsity.  The  poets  have 
invented  the  realm  of  Pluto;  they  have  pried  into  heaven  itself  and 

^  See  5,  405 :  scilicet  ut  veteres  Graium  cecinere  poetae,  which  takes  the  pith  out 
of  the  preceding  story  of  Phaethon.  The  account  of  the  rites  of  Ceres  and  their  alle- 
gorical meaning,  though  flavored  with  an  amount  of  ill-concealed  interest,  ends  with 
a  similar  remark  (2,  644).  We  have  noted  the  same  vein  in  Ciris:  see  above,  p. 
148,  note  5. 

*  Pgm.  26  Hiller. 

'  There  is  irony  in  the  exclamatory  nefas  (v.  43)  and  in  the  description  of  the 
serpentine  giant  (vv.  46  f.).  *  Vv.  29  ff. 

'  See  Sudhaus's  careful  study,  op.  cit.,  pp.  56  ff.  He  explains  the  striking  coin- 
dences  between  Aetna  and  Seneca,  of  which  advocates  of  a  later  date  for  Aetna 
have  made  much,  as  due  to  the  use  of  a  common  source.  This  may  weU  be  the 
case;  I  also  see  no  reason  why  Seneca  should  not  have  borrowed  directly  from 
Aetna,  especially  if  that  be  the  work  which,  he  says,  Vergilius  itnpleverat.  See 
above,  p.  155,  note  4. 

*  V.  74.    This  is  exactly  the  fashion  of  Lucretius.    See  note  i. 


Young  Virgil's  Poetry  159 

recorded  its  scandals  and  its  wars.  That  is  well  enough  for  poetry,  but 
our  present  concern  is  truth  —  it  would  not  be  impossible,  we  feel,  for 
our  philosopher  to  turn  to  mere  poetry  again  if  occasion  arose. 

The  true  explanation  of  Aetna,  we  are  told,  is  that  air  works  into  the 
crevices  of  the  earth,  induces  fire  by  its  action,  and  thus  ignites  and 
sets  in  motion  masses  of  earth  and  stones,  particularly  the  lapis  molaris 
which  constitutes  its  chief  fuel.  The  treatment  of  this  subject  is  char- 
acterized by  clarity  and  a  sense  of  balance.^  It  is  constructed  in 
a  Virgilian  fashion,  with  digressions  or  moral  outbursts  which  effect 
an  aesthetic  reUef  from  the  somewhat  arid  theme.^  The  theme  is  high 
and  difficult,  the  author  asserts,  but  worthy  of  the  dignity  of  man, 
who  was  born,  not  like  the  beasts  to  grovel  in  the  earth,  but  to 
raise  his  head  to  the  skies  and  to  inquire  proudly  into  the  laws  that 
govern  the  world  —  this  noble  passage  has  the  flavor  of  both  the 
Georgics  and  Lucretius.'  Scientific  discovery  is  a  rare  and  sacred 
pleasure,  the  veritable  thrill  of  religious  awe  that  the  vision  of  raining 
atoms  inspired  in  Lucretius  —  divina  est  animi  ac  iucunda  voluptas.* 

The  ordinary  pursuits  of  mankind  are  idle,  the  quest  of  gold  in  the 
veins  of  the  earth,  or  the  farmer's  struggle  for  fertile  soil  and  bursting 
crops  and  lusty  herds,  with  the  ignoble  lure  of  wealth  ever  in  the  fore- 
ground. This  disillusioned  picture  of  the  agricultural  career  suggests 
the  toils  of  Lucretius's  unhappy  farmer  rather  than  the  cheerful  gospel 
I  of  labor  set  forth  in  the  Georgics,  and  yet  the  latter  work  contains  an 

inconspicuous  passage  on  that  round  of  chores  and  calamities  which 
justifies  exasperation  and  prompts  the  wise  maxim 

laudato  ingentia  rura,  exiguum  colito.' 

Read  this  passage  with  no  knowledge  of  its  context,  and  you  would 
think  it  came  from  a  satire  on  farm  life  in  the  vein  of  Aetna. 

'  Vessereau,  op.  cit.,  p.  xliv. 

*  Kruczkiewicz,  op.  cit.,  pp.  151  fif.  He  justly  remarks  that  there  is  more  of  the 
aesthetic  flavor  in  the  digressions  of  the  Georgics  and  more  moral  purp)ose  in  those 
of  the  Aetna  and  Lucretius.  This  is  what  we  should  expect  in  a  poem  inspired  on 
Lucretius  and  written  before  the  Georgics. 

*  Georg.  4,  6:  in  tenui  labor,  at  non  tenuis  non  gloria.    Lucretius,  i,  62  ff. 

*  Vv.  248  ff.  Cf.  Lucr.  3,  28:  his  ibi  me  rebus  quaedam  divina  voluptas  |  per- 
cipit  atque  horror. 

»  Georg.  2,  397. 


i6o  Edward  Kennard  Rand 

The  best  cure  for  the  ills  of  life,  our  author  continues,  is  not  sordid 
farming,  but  the  cultivation  of  the  richer  soil  of  the  intellect.^  Learn 
of  science  the  secret  of  Aetna,  and  the  fears  of  superstition  flee  apace.^ 
Your  wonder  at  the  incredible  will  give  way  to  wonder  at  the  true.  Why 
go  afar  to  visit  the  temples  of  fictitious  gods,  the  fabled  walls  of  Thebes, 
Sparta  and  its  sacred  band,  Athens,  loved  of  Minerva  ?  Science  can 
show  you  better  marvels  near  at  hand,  more  thrilling  than  the  ashes  of 
Troy  or  ruined  Pergamon,  or  the  beauties  of  Greek  art  —  Aphrodite  of 
the  dripping  locks,  Medea's  children  unsuspectingly  at  play,  Aga- 
memnon veiled  for  the  sacrifice  of  his  own  daughter,  the  living  glory  of 
Myron  and  a  thousand  other  works,  which  you  wander  over  lands  and 
seas  to  gaze  upon.  There  is  a  bit  of  epic  in  the  poet's  descriptions, 
especially  in  the  lines  on  Troy.  His  appeal  to  the  beauty  or  the  marvel- 
lousness  of  the  commonplace  and  the  near  is  a  familiar  strain  in 
Horace  ^  and  Virgil,*  and  is  caught  by  both  of  them  from  Lucretius.* 
This  is  not  the  Stoic  contempt  of  art,  else  the  poet  would  not  speak  of 
the  gloria  viva  Myronis;  his  real  censure  is  not  of  the  enjoyment  of  art 
but  of  the  indifference  to  nature. 

The  poem  ends,  as  the  last  book  of  Lucretius  ends,  with  an  episode. 
During  an  eruption  of  Aetna,  everybody  was  hastily  carrying  off  his 
dearest  possessions,  one  groaning  under  gold,  one  loading  his  stupid 
neck  with  swords,  and  one  staggering  under  the  weight  of  his  poems  — 
a  terrible  satire  on  the  Muses,  of  whom  our  author,  we  saw,  is  the 
lasting  foe.  All  these  greedy  folk  were  overtaken  by  the  hot  lava, 
but  Amphion  and  his  brother,  catching  up  their  best  treasures,  their 
aged  parents,  brought  them  through  the  flames,  which  yielded  at  their 
approach;  science  apparently  has  room  for  a  few  miracles.  The  poet 
exclaims,  in  words  recalling  one  of  the  mystic  raptures  of  the  Ciris, 

felix  ilia  dies,  ilia  est  innoxia  terra.' 

Fihal  devotion  like  that  shall  live  forever  and  bards  shall  sing  its 
praise  —  there  seems  to  be  a  use  for  the  poet  after  all. 

^  Vv.  274  ff.  •  Carm.  i,  7. 

*  Vv.  279  ff.  *  Georg.  2,  136  ff. 

*  2,  1026  ff.,  on  the  miracles  of  the  heavens  and  all  that  in  them  is,  which  for 
most  people  fade  into  the  common  light  of  day.  The  sense  of  wonder  comes  to 
expression  in  Aetna  in  v.  156. 

*  V.  637.  Cf.  Ciris,  27  f. 


Young  Virgil's  Poetry  i6i 

This  little  work  is  primarily  a  Lucretian  affair,  with  Lucretian  at- 
titudes and  catch-phrases,  but  its  author  is  not  a  profound  scientist; 
Humboldt  ^  thought  him  a  bit  obvious.  He  is  also,  as  we  have  seen, 
no  rigid  Epicurean.  Like  the  author  of  the  Ciris,  he  is  more  tolerant 
and  eclectic  than  Lucretius;  he  speaks  of  "  the  truest  words  of  the 
book  obscure  "  of  Heraclitus,^  whereas  Lucretius  charged  HeracUtus 
with  using  obscure  words  to  conceal  poverty  of  thought.^  We  see 
the  same  spirit  at  work  as  in  the  Ciris  —  that  of  a  youthful  thinker, 
who  starts  his  philosophical  wanderings  in  the  garden  of  Epicurus,* 
but  soon  builds  him  a  high  tower  on  the  foundations  of  all  four  schools.* 
For  all  that,  the  flavoring  of  the  poem  is  rather  Epicurean  than  any- 
thing else,  notwithstanding  the  borrowings  from  Posidonius  and  others, 
for  the  reason  that  it  is  so  penetrated  with  Lucretius.^ 

That  the  poem  was  written  not  long  after  the  death  of  Lucretius 
may  possibly  be  inferred  from  certain  incidental  allusions.^  In  the 
passage  in  which  the  wonders  of  nature  are  exalted  above  those  of  art, 
several  well-known  works  of  art  are  described  —  the  painting  of  Venus 
Anadyomene  by  Apelles,  the  Medea  of  Timomachus,  the  Iphigenia  of 
Timanthes,  and  the  bronze  cow  of  Myron.^  When  Cicero  wrote  the 
Verrine  orations,'  the  Venus  was  at  Cos,  the  Medea  at  Cyzicus,  and 
the  cow  at  Athens.  The  cow  was  brought  to  Rome  sometime  after 
this  date,  70  b.c,  and  before  the  reign  of  Antoninus  Pius."*  The  Venus 
was  taken  from  Cos  by  Augustus  and  put  up  in  the  temple  of  Caesar.^^ 

^  Kosmos,  (fid.  of  1847),  ii,  21.    See  also  Vessereau,  pp.  xliii  ff. 

»  V.  538.  *  Ciris,  3. 

»  I,  638.  *  Ibid.,  vv.  IS  S. 

•  I  cannot  follow  Sudhaus  in  calling  our  poet  a  Stoic  (p.  ix,  etc.).  The  different 
varieties  of  what  he  calls  the  bitterness  of  the  Stoic  diatribe  may  be  found  in  Lu- 
cretius. L.  Alzinger,  Studia  in  Aetnam  collala,  Lipsiae  (1896),  pp.  3  ff.,  has  an  ex- 
cellent collection  of  parallels  with  Lucretius;  see  also  pp.  35  ff.  Several  additions 
might  be  made,  e.  g.,  the  intransitive  use  of  lurbare;   cf.  v.  168  and  Lucr.  2,  126. 

'  The  only  testimony  of  like  nature  that  indicates  a  later  date  is  the  allusion 
to  certain  hydraulic  devices  (vv.  294,  297  ff.,  328),  of  which  descriptions  exist  in 
post-Augustan  writers.  See  e.  g.,  C.  Catholy,  De  Aelnae  Aetate,  Gryphiae  (1908), 
p.  15.  But  these  devices  were  certainly  known  in  the  year  50  B.C.  also.  See  Al- 
zinger, Blaeiterf.  d.  bayer.  Gymnnasialsch.,  xxxvi  (1900),  649  ff. 

«  Vv.  S94  ff.    See  Alzinger,  Studia,  etc.,  pp.  45  ff.;  Ellis's  notes  on  w.  593  ff. 

'  4,  60,  135.  ^°  See  Kruczkiewicz,  p.  157. 

"  Pliny,  Nat.  Hist.  35,  91. 


1 62  Edward  Kennard  Rand 

The  Medea  was  bought  by  JuHus  Caesar  and  put  up  in  the  temple  of 
Venus  Genetrix.^  Here  we  have  a  very  definite  date,  between  the 
years  46  B.C.,  when  the  temple  was  dedicated,  and  44  B.C.,  when 
Caesar  was  put  to  death.  Kruczkiewicz  ^  was  the  first  to  point  out 
that  the  date  of  the  poem  could  not  be  later  than  the  Augustan  age, 
and  Alzinger  ^  that  it  preceded  the  transfer  of  the  Medea  to  Rome  in 
the  period  between  46  and  44  B.C.  The  hnes  in  the  Aetna  could  scarcely 
have  been  written  after  the  Medea  was  a  familiar  object  in  Rome. 
An  American  writing  today  would  not  say  to  New  Yorkers,  "  Why 
cross  the  ocean  to  see  the  chariot  of  Mother  Cybele  when  you  can 
behold  on  this  side  the  greater  wonder  of  Niagara  Falls?"  at  a  time 
when  the  chariot  of  Mother  Cybele  is  preserved  in  the  Metropolitan 
Museum.  Advocates  of  a  later  date  for  the  Aetna  have  brushed  aside 
this  argument  by  taking  the  poet's  apostrophe  as  addressed  not  to 
Romans  or  Sicilians  but  to  mankind  in  general;*  but  the  repeated 
emphasis  on  crossing  the  seas  to  visit  foreign  scenes  is  too  plain.  ^ 

Another  mode  of  attack  is  to  declare  the  description  too  general  to 
be  associated  with  particular  works  of  art.  Such  is  probably  the  im- 
pression of  anybody  who  reads  the  passage  for  the  first  time;  one  does 
not  feel  disposed  to  limit  the  gloria  viva  Myronis  to  his  cow.  But  the 
writer  is  concerned  with  popular  masterpieces.  He  may  not  have 
studied  Greek  art  in  the  country  of  its  makers,^  but  is  rather  following 
some  traditional  statement  like  that  in  the  Verrines,  which  Cicero 
would  not  have  lugged  in  had  it  meant  nothing  to  his  hearers.  So 
Ovid^  selects  as  typical  subjects  in  art,  Ajax  (also  the  subject  of  a 
noted  painting  by  Timomachus),  Medea  and  Venus  Anadyomene.* 

1  Pliny,  Nai.  Hist.  35,  136.  2  P.  158.  »  Studia,  p.  46. 

*  F.R.WagleT,  Berliner  Stt4dienf.  klass.  Philol.  in  Arch. ,{{1884),  557.  E.  Herr, 
De  Aetnae  Carminis  Sermone,  Marburg  (191 1),  p.  2. 

*  Cf.  w.  571  {traducti  maria)  and  600  {haec  visenda  putas  terrae  dubiusque  ma- 
risque),  the  latter  immediately  after  the  description  of  the  works  of  art. 

'  Virgil  might  possibly  have  been  in  Greece  in  his  youth,  as  Catal.  13  speaks  of 
travels  by  sea.  See  above,  p.  139.  Horace's  propempticon  {Cartn.  i,  3)  written  at 
a  later  time,  refers  to  a  voyage  to  Greece  that  Virgil  at  least  had  some  thought  of 
taking. 

^  Trist.  2,  525. 

*  Authorities  like  Haupt  and  Brunn  agree  on  the  identification  of  the  works  of 
art  described  in  Aetna.    See  Alzinger,  Studia,  p.  45. 


Young  Virgil's  Poetry  163 

Another  solution  suggested^  is  that  the  author  of  the  poem  is 
copying  sources,  not  writing  from  life ;  his  source  was  composed  be- 
fore the  period  46-44  B.C.,  and  he  bhndly  incorporates  it.  This  argu- 
ment really  admits  the  main  point  in  Alzinger's  contention,  only  that 
it  presupposes  a  writer  of  exceeding  woodenness  of  soul,  of  the  char- 
acter that  the  traditional  Quellenforscher  imputes  to  most  subjects  of 
his  analyses.  Our  poet,  whatever  his  feelings,  has  not  sunk  to  such 
a  depth.  If  in  our  hypothesized  American  production,  the  writer 
had  cribbed  his  lines  on  Mother  Cybele  from  a  poet  of  fifty  years  ago, 
the  result  would  seem  doubly  inept.  Let  us  credit  the  author  of  the 
Aetna  with  a  minimum  of  common  sense. 

Still  another  view  is  that  all  the  works  alluded  to  might  have  been 
in  Rome  when  the  passage  was  written.  The  author  is  presenting 
well-known  tj^s,  and  for  this  reason  selects  specimens  that  his 
readers  had  seen  with  their  own  eyes.'^  But  cultivated  readers,  as  the 
passage  in  the  Verrines  proves,  knew  these  particular  specimens  be- 
fore they  were  actually  brought  to  Rome.  I  still  think  it  incredible, 
if  they  were  there,  that  a  writer  should  take  them  and  not  other 
works  as  examples  of  what  one  makes  long  journeys  to  see. 

Another  bit  of  contemporary  evidence  is  perhaps  furnished  by  the 
history  of  the  volcano.  No  eruption  is  recorded  between  the  years 
122  and  50  B.C.,  and  none  between  32  B.C.  and  40  a.d.  Between  50 
and  32  B.C.,  however,  there  were  four  vigorous  eruptions,  in  50,  44, 
38,  and  32.'  The  first  of  these,  after  seventy-two  years  of  quiet  in 
Aetna,  would  have  been  a  considerable,  not  to  say  an  ominous  event 
in  the  Roman  world.  It  might  have  roused  young  Virgil,  who,  by 
our  hypothesis,  had  finished,  or  was  writing,  the  Ciris  and  was  longing 
for  a  proper  inspiration  from  Science.  The  following  eruption  in  44 
B.C.,  which  portended  the  death  of  Julius  Caesar,  certainly  appealed 
to  the  poet's  imagination.* 

On  the  style  of  Aetna,  the  oracles  have  spoken  diversely.  Munro, 
no  mean  judge,  declared  that  the  work  had  no  claim  to  be  Virgil's,'  and 

*  Catholy,  op.  cit.,  p.  14. 
'  Sudhaus,  p.  82. 

*  Alzinger,  Studia,  pp.  46  S. 

*  Georg.  I,  471  S. 

*  Aetna,  p.  32. 


164  Edward  Kennard  Rand 

that  the  style  is  exactly  that  of  Lucan.^  ScaUger,  also  no  mean  judge, 
considered  the  style  Augustan  .^  Sudhaus,  in  his  valuable  edition 
asserts  that  the  author  has  not  passed  through  the  school  of  Ovid.' 
Ellis  balances  what  he  calls  the  only  two  possible  datings  —  one 
shortly  after  Virgil's  death,  the  other  in  the  Silver  Age  —  without 
rendering  a  decision;  ^  he  is  certain  only  that  the  work  is  not  pre- 
Virgilian.^  But  some  there  are,  with  whom  I  concur,  who  find  it,  we 
will  not  say  pre-Virgilian,  but  pre-Bucolic,  They  see  nothing  in  the 
style  that  does  not  comport  with  the  usage  of  50-45  b.c.^ 

The  latest  and  most  elaborate  study  of  the  style  of  the  Aetna  is 
by  E.  Herr7  The  author  has  collected  his  material,  which  is  some- 
times valuable,  with  industry,  but  the  dissertation  as  a  whole  is  a 
good  specimen  of  sham  science,  built  up  of  irrelevant  details,  multi- 
tudinous categories  and  illegitimate  conclusions.  The  first  heading 
is  De  hyperbato  coniunctionum,  and  the  first  topic  discussed  under  it 
is  particulae  et  liberior  collocatio.  Five  instances  are  given  of  post- 
positive et;  e.  g.,  v.  59:  impius  et  miles  .  .  .  provocat.  But  the  read- 
ing, or  the  interpretation,  in  two  of  these  passages  (w.  133,  164)  is 
doubtful,  and  in  another  (v.  140),  as  Herr  admits,  et  may  have  the 
force  of  etiam.  The  statement  is  then  made,  after  Haupt,  that  Virgil 
has  only  forty-three  such  instances  in  all,  and  only  two  in  the  second 
Georgic,  which  the  writer  has  selected  for  comparison  with  the  Aetna.^ 
Horace  is  declared  to  be  bolder  in  his  use  of  the  postpositive  et,  and 
Manilius  very  fond  of  it.  Videmus  igitur  hac  in  re  Aetnae  auctorem 
Vergilium  longe  superare,  propius  ad  Horatii  proxime  ad  Manilii  con- 
suetudinem  accedere?  The  proper  conclusion  is,  that  this  section  of  the 
argument  is  worthless.  So  says  Herr  himself  later  ;^°  he  declares  that 
the  evidence  not  only  of  postpositive  et  but  of  neque,  sed  and  namque  is 

^  Aetna,  p.  34.  It  is  little  short  of  amazing  that  the  noted  editor  of  Lucretius 
should  not  have  appreciated  the  Lucretian  coloring  of  Aetna. 

^  Pub.  Virgilii  Maronis  Appendix  (1595),  p.  86.  He  quotes  Seneca  and  ascribes 
the  work,  which  he  highly  esteems,  to  Cornelius  Severus. 

^  P.  93.  ^  P.  xxxiii. 

*  P.  xlvii.  '  Vessereau,  pp.  xviii  fT. 
'  Op.  cit.,  above,  p.  162,  note  4. 

*  As  we  are  playing  with  statistics,  we  should  not  forget  that  this  book,  treated 
by  Herr  as  an  equivalent  amount,  is  only  five-sixths  of  the  size  of  Aetna. 

»  P.  7.  ">  P.  8. 


Young  Virgil's  Poetry  165 

inconclusive  — ''  tanten  omittere  nolui."  This  beginning  does  not 
impress  us  with  the  writer's  power  of  suppressing  the  non-essential. 

Let  us  turn  to  evidence  that  he  regards  as  serious,  the  substantival 
use  of  neuter  adjectives.  His  first  announcement  is  :^  Demonstratur  in 
Aetna  hunc  usum  saepius  inveniri  quam  apud  optimos.  There  follow 
58  instances  of  the  usage  found  in  the  Aetna,  one  in  Catullus,  21  in 
the  second  Georgic,  and  57  in  the  first  book  of  Manilius.  The  infer- 
ence, obvious  to  an  arithmetically  trained  mind,  is  that  substantival 
neuter  adjectives  for  brevity  I  will  call  them  neuter  substantives 
were  a  rarity  before  Virgil,  came  in  with  him,  and  were  plentifully  de- 
veloped by  ManiUus,  whose  tendency  is  also  illustrated  in  the  Aetna. 
I  can  help  this  case  a  bit,  on  the  principle  of  proportionate  represen- 
tation. As  there  are  542  lines  in  the  second  Georgic,  646  in  the  Aetna, 
926  in  the  first  book  of  Manilius,  the  number  of  substantival  neuter 
adjectives  in  the  Georgics  being  21,  the  proportionate  number  for 
Manilius  would  be  t,^  and  for  the  Aetna  48;  this  reckoning  might  get 
the  Aetna  down  to  the  time  of  Pliny,  where  Herr  would  like  to  put  it. 

But  we  must  apply  other  analyses.  If  we  count  not  the  number  of 
instances  of  any  substantival  neuter  adjective,  whether  repeated  or  not, 
but  the  number  of  different  neuter  substantives,  we  find  19  in  the 
Georgics,  38  in  Manilius,  and  37  in  the  Aetna.  This  reckoning  puts  ^e/wa 
and  Manilius  together,  being  the  proportionate  figures  19,  22,  and  32. 
Furthermore,  in  seven  of  the  passages  in  the  Aetna,  (involving  seven 
substantival  neuter  adjectives),  the  reading  is  uncertain  or  other 
interpretation  is  possible.^  If  we  rule  these  cases  out,  there  remains 
no  noticeable  difference  in  style  betw;een  the  Aetna  and  the  other  two 
works.  More  than  this,  Herr  fails  to  note  one  of  the  most  important 
elements  in  the  question.  He  does  not  record  the  testimony  of  an 
author  generally  reckoned  inter  optimos,  namely  Lucretius.  At  least 
ten  of  the  thirty-eight  substantival  neuter  adjectives  of  the  Aetna 
occur  in  Lucretius,'  seven  of  these  reappearing  in  Virgil.    Ten  more 

^  P.  33- 

*  See  Ellis  and  Vollmer  on  abscondita,  409  hausH,  411  Mum,  458  haud  equidem 
mirum,  463  idaque,  466  collis,  638  dexlera. 

*  Altum,  cava,  falsum,  imum,  malum,  plenum,  profundum,  solidum,  tantum, 
totum.  The  Italicized  words  are  also  found  in  Buc.,  Georg.,  or  Aen.  Cava  occurs 
in  Culex. 


i66  Edward  Kennard  Rand 

are  found  in  the  accepted  works  of  Virgil/  and  one  in  the  Ciris? 
Those  remaining,  nine  in  number,  are  aridiora,  in  artum,  in  breve 
(brevia,  brevibus  are  in  Virgil),  cari,  in  commune,  declivia,  in  inclusis 
(incluso),  in  occulta,  singula  (!). 

But  let  us  put  Lucretius  to  another  test,  of  the  kind  applied  by 
Herr  to  the  other  works.  Taking  the  first  542  Unes  of  Book  i,  the 
equivalent  of  the  second  Georgic,  I  count  no  less  than  79  cases.  On  this 
scoring,  it  would  be  natural  for  Herr  to  welcome  Lucretius,  likewise,  to 
the  entourage  of  the  elder  Pliny.  Preferring  another  kind  of  analysis, 
and  counting  now  the  different  substantival  neuter  adjectives,  I  find 
28,'  virtually  the  number  noted  in  the  Aetna.  This  apparently  curious 
result  is  due  to  the  fact  that  Lucretius,  who  up  to  v.  329  has  11  va- 
rieties and  only  16  instances  of  substantival  neuter  adjectives,  now 
begins  to  talk  about  the  inane;  he  adds  17  varieties  and  63  instances 
in  the  remainder  of  the  passage. 

In  brief,  the  above  evidence  comports  with  the  assimiption  that 
Virgil  wrote  the  Aetna  not  long  after  Lucretius,  and  before  the  Bu- 
colics, Georgics,  and  Aeneid.  His  use  of  neuter  substantives  agrees  in 
the  main  with  that  in  the  De  Rerum  Natura  and  in  his  own  later  works. 
Being  a  writer  of  individuaUty,  he  uses  some  expressions  that  he  does 
not  elsewhere  use,  just  as  in  the  second  Georgic  we  find  some  rather 
striking  cases  not  foimd  in  his  other  works  or  in  Lucretius.* 

As  for  ManiUus,  some  of  the  substantives  recorded  by  Herr  occur 
in  the  accepted  works  of  Virgil,^  some  are  Lucretian,^  some  are  the 

^  Augusta,  densum,  in  longum,  muUis,  in  obliquum,  per  omnia,  parva,  proxitna, 
rapia  (raptis  Aet.,  rapto  Aen.),  in  tenui.  Herr  remarks  on  in  tenui  (p.  35):  hoc 
adiectivum  Aetnae  auctor  solus  substantive  usurpasse  videtur.  He  \W11  find  it  in 
Georg.  4,  6.  ^  Insolitutn. 

'  Bina,  clausa,  coepium,  coniunctum,  cuUa,  deserta,  diversa,  gravius,  inane  (inania), 
omtie  (omnia),  multa,  nulla,  pingui,  de  plena,  prima,  quantum,  reperta,  saepta,  solidi, 
strata,  sublimia,  tantum,  tantundem,  totum,  unum,  vacans,  vacuum,  verum.  On  ex 
pleno,  Herr  observes  (p.  35):  hoc  enim  apud  classicos  non  exstare  videtur:  apud 
Plinium  accusativum  huius  adiectivi  saepius  legimus.  Lucretius's  de  pleno  is 
much  more  to  the  point. 

*  Longinqua  Tarenti,  iusto  laelior,  in  teneris,  in  piano,  per  purum,  exiguo. 

In  adversum,  convexa,  contraria,  diversa,  extrema,  media,  serenum,  summum, 
supremum. 

*  Altum,  in  commime  bonum,  imum,  inane  (inania),  minimum,  omne,  profun' 
dum,  ultima. 


Young  Virgil's  Poetry  167 

veriest  commonplaces,  used  by  almost  any  writer.^  There  are  but 
six  not  found  in  the  other  works  under  discussion.  Two  of  these  are 
in  the  verses:  ^  frigida  nee  calidis  (in  Lucretius)  desint  ant  umida 
siccis  (in  Virgil)  |  spiritus  out  solidis  (in  Lucretius  and  Virgil).  The 
remaining  four  are  acdivia,  in  longius,  ex  simUi  and  vulgata.  The  only 
substantival  neuter  adjectives  found  also  in  the  Aetna,  which  is  sup- 
posed to  "congruere  accurate"  with  the  Manilius,  are:  in  breve  (brevia  in 
Aeneid),  declivia,in  longum  (in  Eel.),  per  obliquum  (in  obliquum  in  Aetna 
and  Georgics) ,  per  omnia  (in  A  eneid) ,  parvis  (general) ,  singula  ( !) .  This 
is  about  what  we  should  expect  from  Manilius.  Both  he  and  the 
author  of  the  Aetna  find  a  fairly  large  number  of  neuter  substantives 
necessary  in  their  technical  subjects,  but  while  Manihus  plods  on  in 
beaten  tracks,  the  poet  of  Aetna,  like  the  poet  of  the  Bucolics,  the 
Georgics  and  the  Aeneid,  creates. 

The  history  of  the  substantival  use  of  the  neuter  adjective  is  a 
profitable  matter  for  investigation,  but  nothing  whatever  can  be 
learned  about  it  from  the  method  pursued  by  Herr.  I  have  gone 
through  others  of  his  categories  with  similar  care,  but  one  specimen 
is  enough.  His  effort,  easily  accompUshed  by  his  plan,  is  to  align 
the  style  of  the  Aetna  with  that  of  the  elder  Pliny,  whom  Birt,  by  a 
curious  lapse  of  taste,  had  suggested  some  years  ago  as  the  author  of 
the  poem.*  This  dissertation,  like  that  of  Holtschmidt  on  the  CtUex, 
does  little  credit  to  the  author  of  Jugendverse  und  Heimatpoesie  Vergils. 

Another  elaborate  production  of  the  school  of  Birt  is  devoted  to  the 
metre  of  the  Aetna  by  J.  Franke.*  His  starting-point  is  Birt's  classifi- 
cation of  the  dactylic  hexameter  into  six  forms  according  to  the 
caesurae  employed.  In  F(orm)  I,  the  masculine  caesura  in  the  third 
foot  is  found,  either  with  or  without  a  supplementary  trithemimeral  or 
hepthemimeral  caesura.    In  F  II,  there  are  only  the  trithemimeral  and 

^  Cuncta,  magna,  maiora,  omnia,  sua,  talia,  tanta,  tantum. 

»  Vv.  141  f. 

*  See  Philologus,  Ivii  (1898),  607  ff.  Herr's  study  of  parataxis  (pp.  62  ff.) 
reaches  the  conclusion  that  the  manner  of  Aetna  agrees  to  a  T  with  that  of  the 
elder  Pliny.  What  is  breviloqiienlia  Pliniana  to  the  school  of  Birt,  Naeke  called 
antiqua  simplicitas.  The  peculiarities  discussed  by  Herr  may  be  found  either 
in  Catullus  (e.  g.,  see  above,  p.  150,  note  3),  or,  as  he  sufficiently  shows,  in  Virgil 
himself. 

^  Res  Metrica  Aetnae  Carminis,  Marburg,  1898. 


1 68  Edward  Kennard  Rand 

hepthemimeral  caesurae.  In  F  III,  besides  these  two,  there  is  a  femi- 
nine caesura  after  the  third  trochee.  In  F  IV,  there  is  a  caesura  after 
the  third  trochee  and  also  a  hepthemimeral  caesura.  In  F  V,  a  caesura 
after  the  third  trochee  is  preceded  by  a  trithemimeral.  In  F  VI,  only 
the  caesura  after  the  third  trochee  is  found.  The  most  desirable  forms, 
according  to  Birt,  are  F  I  and  F  III. 

The  writer  sums  up  his  results  in  three  lists.  The  first  contains 
seventeen  points  in  which  the  metre  of  the  Aetna  is  declared  superior 
to  that  of  the  Georgks,^  the  second  has  fourteen  points  of  inferiority, 
and  the  third,  sixteen  points  of  general  similarity.  The  conclusion, 
which  smacks  of  the  arithmetical  flavor  rehshed  by  the  pupils  of  Birt, 
is  that  the  Aetna  was  written  after  the  Georgics. 

As  in  matters  of  style,  some  of  these  supposed  metrical  habits 
deserve  a  closer  analysis  than  the  counting  of  their  occurrences.  Cer- 
tain of  them,  the  writer  admits,  are  of  minor  importance.  Among  the 
metrical  superiorities  of  the  Aetna,  there  are  eleven  to  which  he  at- 
taches special  significance.  I  will  examine  two  of  these,  by  way  of 
illustration.    No.  i  is  thus  stated. 

"  I.  Forma  II  exstat  in  Aetna  semel  in  vv.  80  f ,  in  Georg.  I  in  w. 
36^^;  F  II:  F  III  in  Aetna  i:  io|,  i:  3f  in  Georg.  7." 
Form  II,  we  learned  from  Birt,  is  an  inferior  form.  Ergo,  the 
Georgics  is  inferior,  which  has  it  twice  as  often  as  Aetna.  But  surely 
this  is  no  defect  of  the  Georgics;  rather  we  see  the  hand  of  the  master 
who  consciously  varies  his  effects.  We  are  not  surprised  to  find  that 
Aetna  is  surpassed  in  the  supposed  virtue  only  by  that  sublime  artist 
Avienus,  who  attains  the  proportion  of  i  in  235  vv.)^ 

Another  "  superiority  "  of  Aetna  is  its  avoidance  of  hiatus.  The 
proportion  is  i  in  646  verses,  but  in  the  first  book  of  the  Georgics,  i  in 
85!.  In  other  words,  there  is  but  one  case  of  hiatus  in  the  Aetna,  the 
rough  verse 

hospitium  fluvium,  aut  semita,  nulla  profectc' 

In  the  first  Georgic,  there  are  six  cases.  In  two,  the  hiatus  occurs  in 
verses  containing  Greek  names,*  a  device  of  which  Virgil  is  fond  and 

I  P.  45.  *  P.  14- 

'  V.  129.    The  hiatus  is  emended  away  by  most  recent  editors. 

♦  Vv.  221,  437. 


Young  Virgil's  Poetry  169 

which  he  introduced  into  his  verse  as  early  as  the  Ciris}  The  first  of 
these  has  a  spondee  in  the  fifth  foot  —  a  rare  occurrence  in  Virgil.  In 
Virgil,  metrical  exceptions  never  rain  but  they  pour.  So  in  v.  281, 
there  is  another  hiatus  in  the  middle  of  the  line;  it  helps  in  slowing  the 
pace  of  the  verse  to  that  of  the  action.  A  similarly  effective  hiatus 
occurs  at  the  beginning  of  the  poem,  a  place  which  the  poet  certainly 
did  not  leave  unfinished.  The  breaking  in  of  the  hiatus  in  v.  4  both 
prevents  the  introductory  Ust  from  becoming  monotonous,  and  serves, 
by  the  necessary  pause,  to  emphasize  the  topic  that  caps  the  poet's 
climax  —  the  story  of  the  bees.    On  more  case  remains,  v.  341 : 

turn  pingues  agni  et  turn  mollissima  vina, 

turn  somni  dulces  densaeque  in  montibus  umbrae. 

I  submit  that  a  reader  who  finds  any  defect  here  has  not  attuned  his 
ear  to  the  subtle  music  of  Virgil's  hexameters.  The  way  to  treat  his 
discords  is  not  to  catalogue  them  as  eccentricities,  but  to  note  how 
they  are  resolved  into  some  larger  harmony. 

Other  points  adduced  by  Franke,  particularly  the  matter  of  eUsion, 
deserve  a  similar  scrutiny.  Many  of  his  collections  are  valuable.  The 
conclusion  to  draw  from  them,  I  beUeve,  is  that  the  metre  of  the  Aetna 
resembles  that  of  the  Georgics  and  the  Bucolics,  but  is  the  work  of  a  less 
practised  hand.  This  result  talhes  with  our  hypothesis  that  Aetna  was 
written  before  the  Bucolics,  and  by  the  same  writer.^ 

1  474:  Nereidum  matri  et  Neptuno  Aegaeo  (i4e«.  3,  74).  This  habit,  so  far  as  I 
can  ascertain  is  one  of  Virgil's  inventions.  Catullus  is  fond  of  ending  a  line  with  a 
spondaic  Greek  name  (e.  g.,  64. 3, 11,  28, 36,  74,  79, 96,  252, 358),  and  Virgil  picks  up 
this  manner  in  Ciris  (73,  113,  239,  326,  413,  486),  sometimes  having  the  same  name, 
as  Amphitrite,  73,  Cat.  11).  Hiatus  is  first  introduced  in  such  a  line  in  v.  474. 
Virgil  liked  the  effect,  and  in  the  later  poems  where  he  gave  art  free  rein,  he  has  a 
number  of  these  verses.  One  of  the  earliest  examples,  and  one  of  the  best,  is  Ed.  2, 
24:  Amphion  Dircaeus  in  Actaeo  Aracyntho.  There  are  no  cases  in  Culex  —  an- 
other sign  that  this  f)oem  is  not  the  work  of  a  later  imitator,  who  might  well  have 
shown  by  a  touch  or  two  that  he  understood  the  refinements  of  the  Virgilian  ehxa- 
meter;  Ovid,  at  least,  has  understood  (cf.  e.  g..  Met.  2,  244;  4,  535).  Lucretius 
uses  Greek  names  when  he  has  to,  but  he  does  not  roll  them  under  his  tongue,  like 
that  blessed  word  Mesopotamia,  in  the  fashion  of  the  Neoterics  and  of  their 
perfecter,  Virgil.  Lucretius  has  no  combinations  of  Greek  names,  spondees  and 
hiatus. 

*  For  excellent  remarks  on  the  verse  of  Aetna,  see  Vessereau,  p.  xlviii. 


170  Edward  Kennard  Rand 

As  has  been  hinted  in  the  foregoing  paragraphs,  the  Virgilian  ele- 
ment in  Aetna  is  only  less  prominent  than  the  Lucretian.^    The  poem 
opens  in  a  manner  resembling  the  first  Georgic  or  the  third.    Not  long 
thereafter  we  come  upon  an  admirably  hissing  line  describing  a  snake:  ^ 
squameus  intortos  sinuat  vestigia  serpens. 

Proper  names  are  woven  into  a  line,  but  not  yet  with  the  full  Virgilian 
skill.^  There  is  good  poetry  in  the  account  of  the  soldier's  battle  with 
the  stars.*  There  is  good  climax,  a  particularly  Virgilian  quaUty,  in  the 
line,  and  the  word  that  closes  the  line,  at  the  end  of  a  lengthy  simile,* 
exilit  atque  furens  tota  vomit  igneus  Aetna. 

A  passage,  cited  by  editors  of  Ovid  for  the  similarity  of  the  matter, 
presents  no  less  striking  a  contrast  in  manner:®  It  is  a  thoroughly 
Virgilian  bit,  Virgil  somewhat  in  the  raw,  one  of  the  bear-cubs  not 
licked  into  shape.''  The  passage  has  no  touch  of  the  easy  elegance  of 
Ovid's  lines.^ 

We  have,  therefore,  in  different  guise,  the  problem  of  the  Ciris  again; 
Catullus  and  Virgil,  with  a  touch  of  Lucretius,  too,  were  mingled  in 
that  poem,  Lucretius  and  Virgil,  with  only  a  reminiscence  of  Catullus,* 
in  this.  Instead  of  pointing  in  either  case  to  the  work  of  a  later  imi- 
tator of  Virgil,  the  evidence,  for  aught  that  I  have  observed,  permits 
us  to  assume  that  Virgil  wrote  both  poems  under  the  spell  of  different 
influences  but  in  the  same  period  of  his  career.  The  Ciris  marks  the 
beginning  of  that  period;  he  is  paying  his  farewell  to  poetry,  poetry  of 
CatuUus's  style,  and  longing  for  the  day  when  he  can  achieve  a  De 
Rerum  Natura.  The  Aetna  marks  the  moment  when  that  wish  is  ful- 
filled, as  well  as  it  could  be  then.    Yet  for  all  his  immaturity,  for  all  his 

^  Kruczkiewicz  discusses  the  similarity  in  subject-matter  (p.  155  ff.),  and  in 
various  detail  of  style  (pp.  160  ff.).  Alzinger's  collections  are  also  most  valuable 
(pp.  3  ff .) ;   they  contain  references  to  the  minor  poems  as  well  as  to  the  greater. 

^  V,  47.    See  above,  p.  117,  note  i. 

'  See  v.  49. 

*  Vv.  51  ff. 

'  V.  329.    For  similar  climax,  see  Ciris,  272. 

«  Vv.  359  ff. 

^  Vita  Donatiana,  6,  81,  Brummer. 

'  Ovid  Met.  15,  340  ff.    See  Sudhaus,  p.  93 ;  Vessereau,  p.  xlviii. 

»  V.  21. 


Young  VirgiVs  Poetry  171 

studied  aversion  to  rhetoric,  the  call  to  poetry  is  audible  enough.^ 
This  impulse  succeeds  here  and  there  in  brushing  away  the  scientific 
manner  which  yoimg  Virgil  has  now  appropriately  assumed,  exactly  as 
he  had  worn  the  mantle  of  Catullus  in  the  Ciris.  There  is  a  maturer 
quality  in  the  present  poem.  The  poet's  revolt  from  the  singers  of 
Euphorion,  his  very  determination  to  have  done  with  poetry  give  a 
Lucretian  strength  and  dignity  to  his  lines. 

Thus  the  old  quarrel  between  philosophy  and  poetry,  not  settled  by 
Lucretius,  took  possession  of  Virgil's  mind.  He  thought  he  had  found 
his  career  —  to  prove  a  second  Lucretius.  The  Aetna  is  the  final 
memorial  of  his  scientific  period.  Every  youth  of  imagination  goes 
through  some  telling  intellectual  experience  which  he  afterwards  looks 
back  upon  with  kindly  amusement  —  an  HegeUan  period,  a  Walter 
Pater  period,  a  SymboUstic  period.  Such  experiences  are  educating; 
they  teach  developing  genius  what  its  goal  is  not.  Virgil  had  not  yet 
known  what  was  in  him;  he  had  not  seen  that  science  was  a  subordi- 
nate element  in  his  vision  of  Ufe.  He  soon  was  to  discover  himself. 
And  yet,  though  poetry  triumphed  in  the  end,  science  was  not  wholly 
routed.  Touches  of  his  youthful  passion  for  science  appear  in  all  of 
Virgil's  greater  works.  He  had  intended,  on  returning  from  his  last 
and  fatal  voyage  to  Greece,  to  devote  the  remainder  of  his  days  to 
philosophy .2  Mr.  Santayana,  in  his  brilliant  essay  on  Lucretius,' 
remarks,  '  Imagine  a  poet  who,  to  the  freedom  and  simplicity  of 
Homer,  should  have  added  the  more  reverent  idealism  of  a  later  age. 
.  .  .  Rationalized  paganism  might  have  had  its  Dante,  a  Dante  who 
should  have  been  the  pupil  not  of  Virgil  and  Aquinas,  but  of  Homer 
and  Plato."  There  is  more,  perhaps,  of  Mr.  Santayana's  programme  in 
the  Aeneid  than  he  has  here  conceded.  At  any  rate,  had  Virgil's  dream 
come  true,  he  would  have  given  the  world  a  new  De  Rerutn  Natura, 
built,  in  the  main,  on  Plato. 

^  Vessereau,  p.  xlvi.  Sudhaus,  p.  93,  remarks:  "Alle  diese  Eigentumlichkeiten 
des  Stils  zeigen  nun,  wie  sich  der  Dichter  bemiiht,  die  breite,  bequeme  Art  des 
Lucrez  durch  gedrungene  Diction  und  komige  Kiirze  zu  uberholen,  ohne  sich  von 
ihm  loslosen  zu  konnen."  I  should  rather  say  that  his  object  was  to  hold  fast  to 
Lucretius  but  that  he  obeyed  perforce  the  workings  of  his  own  temperament. 

*  Vita  Donatiana,  8,  125:  ut  reliqua  vita  tantum  philosophiae  vacaret. 

*  Three  Philosophical  Poets.    Lucretius,  Dante,  and  Goethe.    (1910),  p.  63  ff. 


172  Edward  Kennard  Rand 

Vessereau,  whose  discussion  of  the  problem  of  the  Aetna  is,  in  my 
opinion,  unsurpassed,^  stops  short  of  attributing  the  work  to  Virgil.^ 
He  balks  at  associating  its  crudity  with  the  perfection  of  the  Bucolics, 
which  were  shortly  to  follow.  The  Aetna,  he  would  agree,  appeared 
between  50  and  44  B.C.  The  earliest  of  the  Bucolics  was  written  in  42.' 
Regarding  50  or  48  as  the  approximate  date  of  the  Ciris,  I  am  incUned 
to  put  Aetna  not  too  long  after  it  —  say  early  in  48.  Now  great 
things  can  happen  in  four  or  five  years  at  a  period  when  a  genius  is 
coming  to  his  own.  Misdirected  essays,  while  ultimately  beneficial, 
momentarily  do  not  head  one  towards  the  goal,  but  dammed  for  a 
time,  the  flow  of  poetry  bursts  with  the  greater  suddenness  when  the 
barriers  are  removed.  The  subject  of  Aetna,  like  that  of  the  De  Rerum 
Natura,  was  not  an  easy  one  for  poetry.*  Moreover,  like  master  Luc- 
retius, Virgil  was  doing  his  best  not  to  be  a  poet.  He  did  not,  as  later, 
lavish  all  the  golden  day  to  make  ten  lines  wealthier  in  his  readers' 
eyes.  Given  a  golden  day  while  he  was  writing  the  Georgics,  he  could 
have  made  the  lines  that  I  have  cited  as  Virgilian^  as  splendid  as  those 
that  describe  the  pastoral  storm  .^ 

Further,  we  must  look  at  the  matter  not  only  from  the  summit  of 
Virgil's  later  achievement,  but  from  the  level  that  he  had  thus  far 
attained.  There  is  nothing  in  Aetna,  I  think  Vessereau  would  admit, 
that  the  author  of  Culex,  Catalepton,  and  Ciris  might  not  have  done. 
We  have  also  to  consider  certain  other  pieces  that  fill  in  the  stretch  of 
years  between  Aetna  and  the  Bucolics  and  make  the  transition  easier  to 
understand.  Nor  is  it  an  absolute  perfection  that  is  reached  in  the 
Bucohcs.  There  is  something  youthful  even  in  that  triumph  —  at 
least  so  it  seemed  to  their  author  himself.^ 

*  Only  one  scholar  since  Kruczkiewicz,  so  far  as  I  am  aware,  has  come  out  un- 
reservedly for  the  Virgilian  authorship  of  Aetna;  see  F.  Walter,  in  Blatter  f.  das 
bayer.  Gymnasialsch.,  xxxv  (1899),  5^5  ff-  Alzinger,  Studia,  p.  49,  placed  the  poem 
before  44  B.C.,  and  suggested,  though  with  bated  breath,  that  the  ancient  testimony 
to  the  VirgiUan  authorship  may  be  confirmed  by  what  the  poem  contains.  That  was 
heresy  enough  in  the  year  1896. 

*  Pp.  xxxviii  f . 

'  Vita  Probiana,  73,  12,  Brummer:  scripsit  Bucolica  annos  natus  viii  et  xx. 

*  See  Vessereau's  remarks,  p.  xlvi. 

'  See  above,  p.  170,  note  6.  ^  Georg.  i,  316  ff. 

^  Georg.  4,  565 :  carmina  qui  lusi  pastor um  audax  .  .  .  iuventa. 


Young  VirgWs  Poetry  173 

VI 

The  Epic  on  Res  Romanae 

Thus  far  the  spell  of  Catullus  has  prevailed.  After  Culex,  the  prod- 
uct of  the  poet's  school  days,  comes  a  CatuUan  period  with  Nugae  and 
an  epyllion.  This  is  followed  by  a  philosophic  or  Lucretian  period, 
of  which  the  crowning  effort  is  Aetna.  Neither  of  these  paths  led  to 
genuine  success;  both  gave  experience  of  value.  Virgil's  quest  in  life 
was  for  the  real.  He  was  a  great  artist  and  for  the  expression  of  his 
thought  tolerated  nothing  but  the  best  that  he  could  fashion.  But  his 
art  was  not  for  the  sake  of  art.  He  abandoned  it  in  youth,  when  rhet- 
oric seemed  stale.  He  sought  reality  in  science,  but  something  within 
him  called  for  a  larger  outlet.  His  thought  now  took  a  new  turn. 
His  biographer  tells  us  that  not  long  before  the  Bucolics,  he  planned  an 
epic  on  Rome,  but  finding  the  subject  difficult,  abandoned  it  in  disgust.* 

What  the  subject  of  the  unfortunate  epic  was,  we  can  only  guess. 
Servius  and  Donatus,  it  seems,  could  do  no  better.^  They  find  it 
either  the  Aeneid,  doubtless  meaning  an  early  form  of  that  work,  or  the 
deeds  of  the  Alban  kings;  Virgil  was  diverted  from  the  attempt,  they 
gravely  add,  "  asperitate  nominum  deterritus."  Donatus,  in  the  part 
of  the  note  not  taken  by  Servius,  adds  other  surmises,'  in  particular, 
"  alii  de  hellis  civilibus  dicunt."  This  comes  nearest  to  the  res  Romanae 
mentioned  in  the  Vita.  The  mighty  events  of  the  years  of  civil  war  in 
48  B.C.  and  thereafter  would  naturally  impel  to  epic  a  spirit  that  had 
been  feeling  the  way  towards  it.  There  is  epic  material  in  the  mock- 
heroic  of  Culex,  particularly  in  its  Inferno.  There  is  epic  spirit  in  pas- 
sages of  Ciris  and  Aetna  —  rudis  Calliope,  as  Virgil's  editors  called  it.* 
But  the  moment  had  not  yet  come. 

It  is  hard  to  write  epic  on  a  contemporary  theme.  The  Augustan 
epic  that  Virgil  had  partly  planned  when  he  was  writing  the  third 
Georgic  ^  was  concerned  with  contemporary  history  —  the  actual 
triumphs  of  his  hero  over  the  foes  of  the  state,  whom  he  doomed  to  an 
epic  Inferno.    As  the  poem  gradually  took  shape  in  its  creator's  mind, 

*  Vita  Donatiana,  5,  65,  Brummer.  *  Catal.,  Epilogue. 
»  See  Servius  (Donatus)  on  Ed.  6,  3.  *  Vv.  22  ff. 

*  See  above,  p.  146,  note  3. 


174  Edward  Kennard  Rand 

the  contemporary  and  historical  elements  faded  into  the  background, 
while  the  mythical  and  ideal  succeeded  to  their  place.  The  finished 
work,  informed  with  the  imagination  of  the  poet,  became  all  the  more 
immediate  and  Roman.  There  are  two  bits  of  contemporary  history 
in  the  poem;  one  is  pictured  on  the  shield  of  Aeneas,  the  other  is  tucked 
into  the  Inferno  in  the  form  of  a  prophecy.  But  young  Virgil  was  not 
ripe  for  such  an  achievement.  He  might  have  started  his  early  epic, 
say  in  46  B.C.,  and  worked  at  it  intermittently  up  to  the  moment  when 
"  qffensus  materia,  ad  Bucolica  transiity 

VII 

COPA 

Apart  from  Virgil's  reaction  from  epic,  two  motives  prompted  the 
Bucolics,  resulting  in  two  different  kinds  of  eclogue.  One  is  the  simple 
expression  of  his  fondness  of  the  country  and  of  poems  about  the 
country.  This  pastoral  interest  already  conspicuous  in  the  earliest  of 
his  works,  appears  again  in  the  Copa,  if  we  may  attribute  this  poem  to 
him.  It  is  attested  by  manuscripts  of  the  ninth  century  and  later, 
being  found  in  the  same  sources  as  Dirae  and  Lydia;  it  doubtless 
formed  part  of  that  ancient  codex  whence  all  our  manuscripts  of  the 
minor  poems  are  derived.^  Although  not  in  Donatus's  hst,  it  is  in  that 
of  Servius,  and  may  have  been  carelessly  omitted  by  the  writer  of  the 
archetype  of  our  manuscripts  of  the  Vita  Donatiana?  Further,  Copa 
is  cited  as  Virgil's  by  the  grammarian  Charisius  in  the  fourth  century,' 
and  in  the  preceding  century,  the  pastoral  poet  Nemesian  borrowed  a 
verse  of  the  poem  almost  without  change.*  Another  witness  in  the 
ninth  century  is  Micon,  who  cites  one  of  the  verses  in  his  prosodic  dic- 
tionary.*   This,  then,  is  satisfactory  evidence  of  an  external  kind. 

However  much  scholars  differ  as  to  the  authorship  of  the  poem,  they 
agree  that  its  charm  is  unique.^    It  represents  the  proprietress  of  a 

^  See  above,  pp.  iioff.  ^  gee  above,  pp.  106  f. 

*  Gramm.  Lai.  i,  63,  11  K. 

*  4,  46:   Hie  age  pampinea  mecum  requiesce  sub  umbra.    Cf.  Copa  31. 

*  See  Vollmer,  Silzungsberichte,  etc.  (1907),  p.  349. 

*  See  Cruttwell,  History  0} Roman  Literature  (ed.  1893),  p.  257.  Vollmer,  Sitzungs- 
berichte,  etc.  (1907),  p.  255,  de  Gubernatis,  op.  cit.,  pp.  215,  220,  and  C.  Giussani, 
Letteratura  Rotnana,  Milano  (1898-99),  p.  247,  are  the  only  scholars  who  have 


Young  VirgiVs  Poetry  175 

humble  tavern  performing  a  seductive  tarantella  outside  the  door  and 
plying  the  wayfarer  with  inducements  to  turn  in.  In  the  manner  of  the 
pastoral  swain,  she  enumerates  the  attractions  of  the  place  —  the  rose, 
the  bowl  and  the  lute,  a  cool  and  shady  pergola,  the  sweet  sound  of  the 
shepherd's  pipe  in  a  Maenalian  grotto,  country  wine  just  broached, 
sparkhng  water  and  heaps  and  heaps  of  posies  brought  in  a  basket  by 
the  n)miph  Achelois  from  the  stream.  Cheeses  and  plums  and  chest- 
nuts and  sweet  blushing  apples  are  there.  Priapus  watches  the  garden, 
which  is  stocked  with  grapes  and  mulberries  and  cucumbers.  Come  in, 
then,  try  a  summer  bumper  and  twining  your  brow  with  roses,  gather 
sweets  from  the  Ups  of  a  pretty  girl.  Why  save  up  garlands  to  crown 
your  tombstone  ?  Yielding  to  this  appeal,  the  traveller  calls  for  wine 
and  dice  and  bids  the  morrow  look  out  for  itself;  for  Death,  plucking 
us  by  the  ear,  cries,  "  Live  ye;  I  come!  " 

Some  have  thought  this  poem  a  bit  too  jovial  for  Virgil.^  Is  Copa 
more  jovial  than  the  picture  of  two  satyr-lads  and  a  fair  nymph  steaUng 
up  to  the  drowsy  and  still  tipsy  Silenus  and  binding  him  with  gar- 
lands ?  Is  there  anything  in  Copa  that  the  p)oet  would  not  have  ven- 
tured who  makes  Silenus  promise  the  lads  the  songs  they  desire,  and 
adds  for  the  benefit  of  the  nymph  that  hers  shall  be  a  different  reward  ? 
Servius  who  has  a  rather  solemn  note  on  this  passage  from  the  sixth 
Eclogue,^  is  not  bUnd  to  its  Epicurean  flavor  —  indeed  he  finds  Epicu- 
rean dogma  in  it.^  Surely  Virgil  could  interpret  dramatically  the  lower 
sort  of  Epicureanism,  as  the  character  of  Anna  in  the  Aeneid  shows.* 
There  is  boisterous  ribaldry  enough  in  the  third  Eclogue,  and  the  sen- 

recently  come  out  for  the  Virgilian  authorship  of  the  poem.  It  has  been  attributed 
to  various  authors  of  the  Augustan  age  —  Valgius  Rufus,  Propertius,  and,  with 
proper  gallantry,  to  Propertius's  sweetheart,  CjTithia  (Hostia);  for  the  last- 
named  hypothesis,  F.  Keppler,  Ueber  Copa,  Leipzig,  1908,  is  responsible.  Some  put 
the  poem  in  the  second  century  of  our  era,  ascribing  it  to  Florus  or  to  Septimius 
Serenus.  For  a  review  of  these  opinions,  see  C.  Morelli,  in  Stitdi  di  Filol.  Class., 
xix  (1912),  228  f. 

1  So  A.  Gudeman,  op.  cit.  (above  p.  104),  2.    Birt,  Jugendverse,  etc.,  p.  10. 

*  Onv.  26:  nymphaeminatur  stuprumlatenter:  quod  verecunde  dixit  Vergilius. 
Little  verecundia  on  the  part  of  Silenus,  I  fear;  there  is  a  difference  between  modesty 
and  innuendo.  There  is  also  a  little  more  humor  in  Virgil  than  in  some  of  his 
illustrious  commentators  ancient  and  modem. 

*  On  Ed.  6,  13:  ut  ostendat  plenam  sectam  Epicuream,  etc 

*  Cf.  Aen.  4,  32  and  Copa,  35. 


176  Edward  Kennard  Rand 

suous  joy  of  living  is  written  on  many  pages  of  the  Bucolics  and 
Georgics.    And  Virgil  composed  love  poems,  like  everybody  else.^ 

Before  thinking  the  Copa  too  riotous  for  the  saintly  Virgil,  we  may 
turn  to  one  of  thePriapean  poems  ^  on  a  barmaid — apparently  a  favorite 
subject  in  works  of  this  kind.  The  Copa,  for  length  and  subject,  might 
almost  have  a  place  among  the  tributes  to  the  scarecrow  god.^  The 
god  himself  is  described  in  open  language,  but  not  more  open  than  that 
in  the  second  of  Virgil's  poems  on  Priapus.  It  may  be  that  Virgil, 
intending  another  Priapean,  proceeded  to  refine  the  material  in  his 
way,  and  ended  by  writing  a  different  poem,  in  which  the  barmaid,  not 
the  scarecrow  god  is  the  central  figure.* 

The  art  of  the  poem  is  firmer  and  more  mature  than  that  of  the 
poems  examined  thus  far.  Naeke,*  for  this  reason,  put  it  in  the  age  of 
Ovid,  not  reckoning  with  the  pre-Ovidian  character  of  the  elegiac 
pentamenter.^  This  is  the  most  important  fact  to  observe  about  the 
metre;  in  the  case  of  so  short  a  poem,  elaborate  comparative  sta- 
tistics are  labor  lost.^  Coincidences  with  Virgil  and  Propertius  are 
patent;  but,  as  we  have  learned  from  the  other  minor  works,  that  is 
no  cause  for  putting  Copa  after  the  dates  of  these  poets.* 

*  See  above,  p.  132. 

*  Priapea,  27. 

'  No.  67,  the  longest  in  the  collection,  has,  like  the  Copa,  38  verses. 

*  Morelli,  loc.  cit.,  p.  235,  thinks  that  the  author  of  Priap.  27  parodies  Copa. 
This  may  be  so.  I  am  assuming  that  Virgil  knew  the  subject-matter  of  No.  27,  not 
necessarily  that  poem  itself,  which  might  have  been  later.  If  it  contains  parody  of 
Copa,  we  may  infer  the  existence  of  that  work  in  the  earlier  part  of  the  Augustan 
age. 

'  Op.  cit.,  p.  239. 

"  See  above,  p.  142,  and  for  other  details,  K.  Mras,  in  Wiener  Sttidien,  xxiii  (1901), 
252  ff.,  esp.  254  f.,  265.  Another  early  sign  is  the  heaping  of  adjectives  and  parti- 
ciples on  the  same  noun  (vv.  1-4).    See  above,  pp.  121  f. 

^  See  Morelli,  loc.  cit.,  p.  228,  N.  4;   Vollmer  Sitzungsberichte,  etc.  (1907)  p.  351. 

8  See  Mras,  loc.  cit.,  pp.  264  ff.;  VoUmer,  loc.  cit.,  pp.  355  ff.  On  account  of  the 
"  imitations  "  of  Virgil  and  Propertius,  Mras  would  date  Copa  after  the  latter's 
death  in  15  B.C.  But  owing  to  the  pre-Ovidian  metre,  it  must  antedate  Ovid.  The 
only  possible  date,  therefore,  according  to  Mras,  is  the  latter  part  of  15  B.C.  Now 
Ovid  had  begim  his  elegies  on  Corinna  at  least  as  early  as  22  B.C.,  and  published 
the  first  edition  of  the  Amores  probably  in  19  or  18  B.C.;  see  the  writer's  article  in 
Amer.  Journ.  Philol.,  xxviii  (1907),  287  ff.,  the  results  of  which  have  been  accepted 
by  R.  Ehwald  in  Bursian's  Jahresberichte,  cixvi  (1914),  75.     One  might,  then, 


Young  Virgil's  Poetry  177 

The  chief  excellence  of  Copa  is  the  easy  grace  with  which  diverse  ele- 
ments are  combined  in  a  novel  literary  form  of  notable  unity.  The 
suggestion  of  pastoral  is  immediate.  Our  author,  who  showed  no  sign 
of  Theocritus  in  Culex,  has  by  this  time  read  his  Greek  Bucolic  poets 
with  care/  and  appHes  their  devices  to  a  novel  situation;  he  will  soon, 
in  the  second  Eclogue,  apply  them  to  a  strictly  pastoral  theme.  He 
uses  the  elegiac  metre,  however;  elegy  had  developed  pastoral  ten- 
dencies in  Hellenistic  literature,  and  it  had  a  fascination  for  Virgil. 
One  critic,  however,^  declares  that  Copa  is  not  elegy,  but  epigramma 
dimostrativo.  Whether  it  be  elegy  or  something  that  looks  like  elegy, 
the  infusion  of  the  pastoral  element  into  the  elegiac  form  is  an  achieve- 
ment with  which  Tibullus  is  generally  credited; '  this  is  the  reverse  of 
the  process  carried  out  by  the  successors  of  Theocritus,  who  swamped 
the  pastoral  with  the  erotic  elegy.  If  Copa  is  Virgil's,  then  he  paved 
the  way  for  Tibullus  just  as  he  did  for  Horace  in  his  Epodes.*  But 
again,  with  its  bit  of  dialogue  and  its  realism,  like  that  of  some  Pom- 
peian  scene,  the  poem  recalls  the  Uttle  one-scene  plays  or  mimes  which 
had  been  popular  in  both  Alexandria  and  Rome.  It  is  not  entirely 
realistic;  the  ordinary  barmaid  would  not  be  familiar  with  Maenalian 
grottoes  or  the  nymph  Achelois.  In  this  very  commingling  of  art  and 
nature,  the  piece  is  characteristic  of  Virgil.^  Finally,  the  immediate 
suggestion  was  perhaps  given  by  a  Priapean  topic.  In  brief,  this  httle 
poem  is  a  fable  for  the  departmental  critics  of  literature,  who  do  not 
Uke  to  see  poets  trangress  their  Gebiet;^  like  Ciris  and  Aetna,  it  repre- 

argue  that  the  brillant  author  of  Copa,  if  writing  as  late  as  15  B.C.,  would  have  known 
and  utilized  the  metrical  improvements  perfected  by  Ovid.  We  should,  therefore, 
date  the  poem  before  Ovid's  work  was  well  known,  that  is,  before  the  Aeneid  was 
published.  Hence,  it  is  the  author  of  the  Aeneid  who  borrowed  from  Copa  and  not 
vice  versa. 

1  See  Morelli,  op.  cit.,  for  parallels  in  Greek  authors. 

*  Ibid.,  p.  231. 

'  See,  e.  g.,  Norden,  in  Neue  Jahrbb.f.  d.  klass.  Altert.,  etc.,  vii  (1901),  269,  F. 
Jacoby,  Rhein.  Mus.,  Ix  (1905),  81  ff.,  would  attribute  the  innovation  to  Gallus, 
particularly  on  the  strength  of  Ed.  10,  but  a  careful  reading  of  that  piece  will  show 
that  pastoral  is  precisely  what  Gallus  had  not  been  writing. 

*  See  above,  pp.  140, 

*  See  above,  p.  116. 

*  See  Hack's  refreshing  article.  The  Doctrine  of  Literary  Forms,  in  Harv.  Studies 
Class.  PhiM.,  xxvii  (1916),  i  ff. 


178  Edward  Kennard  Rand 

sents  a  confluence  of  literary  tendencies  in  its  form  and  a  confluence  of 
emotional  interests  in  the  mind  of  the  poet.  Copa  is  an  Epicure9.n 
document  of  a  sort,  though  not,  like  the  sixth  Eclogue  as  allegorized  by 
Servius,  a  text  of  Epicurean  dogma.  Epicurean  philosophy,  as  its 
founder  preached  it,  stands  nearer  to  monasticism  than  to  riotous 
pleasure.  Perhaps,  indeed,  the  poem  marks  Virgil's  reaction  from 
Epicurean  science,  when,  ofensus  materia,  he  turned  again  to  the  sheer 
joy  of  living  and  of  art.^ 

MORETUM 

A  poem  of  equal  finish  and  equal,  if  different,  interest  is  the  Moreium, 
or '  Salad.'  It  has  won  the  plaudits  of  competent  judges,^  and  has  been 
translated  by  poets  as  diverse  as  Cowper  and  Leopardi.  It  is  simply 
the  description  of  a  peasant's  morning  meal.  If  this  be  a  sufficiently 
epic  subject,  the  poem  is  an  epyllion.  Simylus,  probably  a  slave,  or  a 
recent  slave,  owns  a  cottage  and  a  bit  of  a  garden.  He  gets  up  while  it 
is  still  dark,  finds  the  hearth  by  stumbling  on  it,  starts  the  fire,  grinds 
his  meal  to  the  accompaniment  of  a  song  and  calls  to  his  helpmate, 
Scybale,  or  '  Trash,'  a  very  knowingly  portrayed  negress.  After  mixing 
his  bread,  he  allows  Scybale  to  bake  it,  and  proceeds  to  the  great  act  of 
the  story,  the  creation  of  the  salad.  Getting  the  proper  herbs  from  the 
garden,  not  forgetting  four  cloves  of  garlic,  he  seasons  them  with  salt 
and  cheese,  stirring  them  with  a  httle  oil  and  vinegar  into  a  homoge- 
neous mixture,  in  which  the  individual  ingredients  lose  their  original 
virtues  to  form  the  new  harmonious  whole,  the  perfect  salad.  Scybale, 
meanwhile,  has  taken  out  the  bread  and  breakfast  is  ready.  Fortified 
therewith  for  that  day,  Simylus  draws  on  his  boots,  drives  his  team  to 
the  cornland  and  plunges  the  plough  in  the  soil. 

The  art  of  this  delightful  and  original  production  is  not  Virgilian.  It 
does  not,  like  Culex  and  Copa  and  Bucolics  and  Georgics,  present  a 
harmony  of  realistic  observation  and  literary  allusion.  It  is  all  realism ; 
the  names  of  gods  are  used  for  the  substances  that  they  represent,^  but 
this  common  device  does  not  affect  the  prevaiHng  tone  of  matter-of- 

^  I  would,  therefore,  date  Copa  about  45  B.C.,  though  ready  to  admit  that  it 
might  have  been  done  earlier,  perhaps  with  the  Priapea,  in  the  CatuUan  period. 
2  E.  g.,  Naeke,  op.  cit.,  p.  238;  Mackail,  op.  cit.,  p.  70;  Giussani,  op.  cit.,p.  247. 
»  V.  113:  Palladii  guttas  olivi.    Cf.  vv.  52,  $5- 


Young  VirgiVs  Poetry  179 

fact  veracity.  The  author  is  not,  like  Virgil  in  the  Georgics,  concerned 
with  country  life  as  a  symbol  of  simplicity;  he  is  interested  in  a  situa- 
tion, which  he  sets  before  us  with  vividness  and  charm.  Virgil  may 
have  passed  through  a  brief  period  of  realism  in  the  prelude  of  his 
career,  or  he  may  at  almost  any  time  have  amused  himself  with  trans- 
lating a  piece  of  his  master  Parthenius.^  Supposing  that  unquestion- 
able external  evidence  vouched  for  the  Moretum,  we  could  add  it  to  his 
experiments.  The  fact  is,  that  though  the  poem  is  ascribed  to  Virgil  in 
manuscripts  as  early  as  the  ninth  century,  it  is  not  in  the  ancient  Ust.^ 
We  are  reUeved  of  the  necessity  of  adjusting  it  to  the  other  poems.  The 
quest  of  its  talented  author,  presumably  a  writer  of  the  Augustan  age, 
need  not  engage  us  here. 

VIII 

DiRAE 

Virgil's  interest  in  the  simpler  type  of  pastoral  is  illustrated  by 
Copa;  the  more  elaborate  form  appears  in  the  Dirae,  or  *  Curses,'  the 
last  of  the  works  mentioned  in  the  ancient  list.  These  curses  are  pro- 
nounced by  the  poet  on  his  own  estate  of  which  he  has  been  robbed 
for  the  benefit  of  an  old  soldier.  Battarus,  a  fellow-shepherd,  who, 
Uke  Mopsus  in  the  fifth  Eclogue,  is  skilled  in  accompaniment,  plays 
his  pipe  while  the  poet  deUvers  the  imprecation,  or,  rather,  a  kind  of 
siunmary  and  reminiscence  of  an  imprecation  already  delivered;'  he 
changes  his  tones  from  Uvely  to  severe  at  the  other's  bidding.  The 
poet  prays  that  the  pleasant  breezes  and  the  sweet  breath  of  the  soil 
may  change  to  pestential  heat  and  fell  poison;  he  invites  fires  and 
floods  to  do  their  worst  with  his  favorite  grove  and  all  of  his  Uttle 
estate  that  the  impious  surveying-rod  has  measured  off.    The'  pipe 

^  The  latter  point  is  well  made  by  Giussani,  op.  cit.,  p.  247.  However,  the  sup- 
posed facts  in  the  case  have  been  called  in  question,  with  good  reason,  by  R.  Sab- 
badini  in  Rivista  di  Filol.  xxmi  (1903),  471;  xliii  (1915),  80. 

'  See  above,  p.  i  loff .  Its  position  in  the  Libellus  after  the  Ausonian  works  De  Est 
et  Non,  De  Institutione  Viri  Boni,  and  De  Rosis  Nascentibus  arouses  suspicion. 
Nettleship  (revision  of  Conington's  Virgil  by  Haverfield,  i  (1898),  xx)  sought  to 
show  that  there  is  a  faint  chance  of  its  having  been  in  the  ancient  list.  Vollmer 
(Sitzungsberichle,  etc.  (1907),  p.  341)  evidently  would  like  to  accept  Moretum  on 
the  basis  of  the  Murbach  list. 

*  Vv.  1-3 :  Battare,  cycneas  repetamus  carmine  voces,  etc. 


i8o  Edward  Kennard  Rand 

plays  a  more  cheerful  note  as  he  imagines  the  new  occupant  gathering 
rushes  in  the  swamps  where  grain  flourished  before  and  hearing  the 
croak  of  a  garrulous  frog  in  the  ancient  domain  of  the  grasshopper. 
With  the  thought  that  the  curse  of  civil  war  has  brought  the  evil  to 
pass,  the  shepherd  prepares  to  leave  his  estate  and  his  beloved  Lydia. 
His  sheep  climb  slowly  down  the  hills,  as  he  takes  a  farewell  look  and 
vows  that  nothing  can  drive  from  his  heart  the  love  of  his  little  farm. 
This  poem  seems  to  me  altogether  in  Virgil's  manner,  and  not  far 
removed  in  time  from  the  Bucolics.  There  are  various  coincidences  in 
phrase  with  several  of  the  Eclogues,  and  the  closing  scene  notably  re- 
calls that  of  the  first  of  them.^  The  verse  is  firm  and  strong,  the  de- 
scription contains  touches  of  Virgil,  like  the  Une 

hinc  aurae  dukes,  hinc  sua  vis  spiritus  agri  (22) 
or  the  exact  observation  of  nature  in 

praecipitent  altis  fumantes  montibus  imbres  (76), 

But  these  bucolic  and  realistic  elements  are  combined,  in  a  more 
elaborate  kind  of  pastoral,  with  actual  history.  The  poem  reflects  the 
woes  of  the  Mantuan  district,  rather  after  Mutina  in  43  b.c.^  than 
after  Philippi  in  42,  as  the  art  of  Dirae  is  less  perfect  than  that  of  the 
Bucolics,  which  Virgil  began  to  publish  in  the  latter  year.  Dirae 
helps  us  understand  the  motive  for  historical  allegory  in  those  works. 
A  real  disaster  has  come  to  the  poet  —  perhaps  not  to  Virgil  himself, 
but  at  least  to  his  townsfolk.  For  the  purpose  of  his  poem,  he  plays 
the  r61e  of  a  shepherd  who  has  lost  his  farm.  He  looks  for  an  appro- 
priate medium  of  indignation,  and  selects  the  poet's  curse  —  'Apd  — 
which  Ovid  also  found  useful  in  his  exile.^    Naturally,  the  curse  is 

1  For  a  list  of  Virgilian  parallels,  see  G.  Eskuche,  De  Valerio  Catone  deque  Dirts 
et  Lydia,  Marburg,  (1889),  pp.  63  ff. 

*  So  the  Vita  Probiana,  73,  5  (Brummer).  Conditions  were  unsettled  in  Cisalpine 
Gaul  in  43  B.C.  as  well  as  in  42.  Antony  arrived  there  about  the  end  of  November, 
44,  and  made  at  once  for  Mutina,  where  he  found  Decimus  Brutus  besieged.  The 
battle  of  Mutina  was  fought  at  the  end  of  April,  43.  It  was  thenceforth  a  period  of 
much  commotion  for  the  inhabitants.  Even  if  no  formal  orders  were  given,  cases  of 
misappropriation  of  the  rustics'  lands  by  soldiers  would  have  been  possible  enough. 
Later,  after  Philippi,  fresh  allotments  were  made.  Virgil's  townsmen  might  have 
suffered  on  both  occasions. 

*  Callimachus's  Ibis  is  one  of  the  various  Hellenistic  models  with  which  both 
Ovid  and  the  author  of  Dirae  were  doubtless  familiar. 


Young  Virgil's  Poetry  i8i 

fitted  to  the  situation.  Shepherds  have  lost  their  farms;  it  is  a  pas- 
toral curse.  The  next  step  is  to  write  an  actual  bucoUc  on  the  same 
theme.  In  this  way  contemporary  history  creeps  into  the  pastoral,  not 
because  the  poet,  starting  with  the  pastoral  convention,  seeks  to  em- 
beUish  it  with  a  rather  questionable  novelty,  but  because  impelled  by 
a  lively  sense  of  wrong  to  write  of  contemporary  events,  he  adapts  these 
to  an  appropriate  poetical  form.  The  one  undertaking  is  artificial; 
the  other  is  sincere.  But  the  actuaUties  do  not  loom  too  large  in  the 
Dirae.  Virgil  is  never  crassly  historical;  that  is  the  secret  of  the 
Bucolics  and  the  Aeneid  alike.  So  here,  it  is  hard  to  locaUze  the  poet's 
farm  at  either  Mantua  or  Cremona.  In  fact,  it  lies  on  the  shore  of  the 
sea,^  and  if  the  curse  avails,  will  be  deluged  with  salt  waves  and  be 
called  another  Syrtis  —  a  disconsolate  shepherd  in  the  Bucolics  makes 
the  same  prayer,  which  is  taken  by  condescending  editors  for  a  mis- 
translation of  Theocritus.^  It  is  ever  Virgil's  way  to  merge  the  actual 
in  the  typical  and  ideal,  and  thus  to  make  its  reaUty  the  brighter. 

Except  for  VoUmer,  who  finds  nothing  in  Dirae  to  contradict  the 
ancient  testimony,  there  are  few  today  who  would  ascribe  the  poem 
to  Virgil.'  A  discovery,  now  universally  accepted,  was  made  in  1792 
by  F.  Jacobs,^  who  saw  that  the  text  called  Dirae  in  the  manuscripts 
really  contains  two  poems;  the  latter  of  these,  from  the  name  of  the 
shepherdess  from  whom  her  swain  is  parted,  is  called  Lydia  by  recent 
editors.  Scaliger,  developing  a  remark  of  Gyraldus's,  was  the  first 
to  propound  the  attractive  theory  that  the  author  of  both  pieces  was 
Valerius  Cato,  who,  Suetonius  tells  us,*  lost  his  inheritance  in  the 
troubled  days  of  Sulla,  sang  of  a  love  named  Lydia,  and  also  com- 
posed a  work  evidently  charged  with  the  sentiment  of  the  Dirae,  as  it 
was  entitled  Indignatio.    But  Suetonius  also  suggests  enough  of  the 

»  Vv.  48-53- 

^  See  Conington's  note  on  Eel.  8,  58. 

'  The  manuscript  tradition  is  the  same  as  that  of  Copa.  VoUmer  thinks  that  the 
poem  was  not  included  in  the  Bucolics  because  of  its  bitter  tone.  The  reason  is 
rather,  that  in  the  first  Eclogue,  Virgil  worked  up  the  same  material  in  a  new  form. 
Dirae,  after  all,  is  an  'Apd  and  not  a  pastoral. 

*  Vermischle  Schriften,  5,  639.  Naeke,  op.  cii.,  p.  250,  who  in  an  early  publica- 
tion gave  Jacobs  the  credit  for  the  observation,  says  that  when  that  vir  praestantis- 
simus  et  maxime  amabilis  later  visited  Bonn,  he  remarked,  stiari  et  plane  sua  tno- 
desiia,  that  he  had  quite  forgotten  his  little  discovery. 

'  De  Cramm.  11. 


i82  Edward  Kennard  Rand 

contents  of  the  Indignatio  to  show  that  it  was  an  entirely  different 
affair.^    The  latest  tendency  is  to  treat  both  poems  as  anonymous.^ 

Lydia 

The  Lydia  offers  crucial  evidence  for  the  views  that  I  have  been 
setting  forth.  As  the  work  is  not  mentioned  in  the  ancient  list,  we 
have  no  a  priori  right  to  call  it  Virgil's.  As  it  is  found  agglutinated 
to  Dirae,  however,  one  naturally  assumes  a  common  authorship,  es- 
pecially as  Lydia  figures  in  both  poems.  But  the  vaUdity  of  our  test 
is  apparent  the  moment  that  the  two  poems  are  compared.  They 
cannot  be  by  the  same  hand. 

In  the  latter  piece,  we  are  presented  with  a  shepherd  who  envies 
certain  meadows  because  they  can  enjoy  the  presence  of  Lydia,  from 
whom,  for  some  unstated  reason,  he  is  now  parted.  There  is  none  of 
the  atmosphere  of  Dirae  here  —  no  lost  estate,  no  intruding  soldier. 
The  meadows,  whose-ever  they  were,  will  continue  to  blossom  like 
the  rose,  especially  if  Lydia  be  playing  in  them.  The  poet  repeats 
his  envy  in  a  love- sick  refrain  —  invideo  vobis,  agri.  The  maiden, 
meanwhile,  is  coquettishly,  perhaps  symbolically,  plucking  green 
grapes  with  rosy  fingers  or  crushing  the  soft  grass  on  which  she 
lies,  as  she  warbles  pretty  nothings  to  meadow,  stream  and  grove. 
Never  maiden  prettier  or  wittier  than  she,  fit  mate  for  Jove  himself  — 
but  hold!  This  message  is  not  intended  for  Jove's  ear.  She  is  not 
destined,  evidently,  to  be  the  poet's  mate,  for  he  is  slowly  but  surely 
melting  into  death.  Disappointed  love,  not  exile,  seems  to  be  his 
malady;  his  career  has  been  a  string  of  amatory  failures.  The  happy 
animals  are  all  mated.  The  moon  has  her  Endymion  and  Phoebus 
his  Daphne.  The  sky  is  populated  with  the  sweethearts  of  the  gods. 
Why,  then,  has  so  dreary  a  lot  befallen  humankind  ?    Or  is  the  lover's 

^  See  Teuffel,  §  200,  2.  Naeke,  p.  264,  makes  a  desperate  attempt  to  fit  the  matter 
described  by  Suetonius  into  such  a  frame  as  that  of  the  Dirae.  It  is  not  even  sure 
that  the  Indignatio  was  a  poem. 

*  Teuffel,  he.  cit.  Schanz,  §99,  continues  to  look  with  favor  on  Scaliger's  hy- 
pothesis. The  best  presentation  of  this  view  was  made  by  Naeke,  op.  cit.,  and  is 
further  supported  by  Eskuche,  who  reviews  the  literature  of  the  controversy,  p.  50. 
Stylistic  and  metrical  characteristics  (Naeke,  317;  Eskuche,  52  ff.),  present  nothing 
glaringly  xm-Virgilian.  These  scholars  have  proved,  I  believe,  that  both  Dirae  and 
Lydia  antedate  the  Bucolics. 


Young  VirgiVs  Poetry  183 

passion  a  sin?  Was  he  the  first  to  know  the  joys  of  stolen  sweets? 
Would,  indeed,  that  he  had  gained  this  proud  distinction!  His  name 
would  go  ringing  down  the  corridors  of  time.  There  follows  another 
series  of  divine  exempla,  the  amours  of  gods  and  heroes  in  the  golden 
age.  Ah,  why  was  not  the  poet  born  then,  when  passion  was  not  out  of 
date  ?  Such  is  the  rack  and  ruin  wrought  on  him  by  pitiless  fate,  that 
scarce  enough  of  hin!  remains  to  make  out  with  the  eye.  With  that, 
this  belated  Jupiter  melts  Uterally  into  an  ounce  or  two  of  decadence. 
His  separation  from  the  meadows  is  now  explained;  he  is  not  an 
ejected  tenant  but  a  dying  swain. 

Virgil  did  not  disdain  the  theme  of  the  present  poem,  but  he  could 
exalt  it  to  serious  poetry.  A  reading  of  the  eighth  Eclogue  and  the 
Lydia  will  show  what  is  Virgil  and  what  is  not.  The  author  of  the 
latter  work  could  not  have  been  Virgil  in  any  period.  He  is  a  de- 
scendant of  the  later  Hellenistic  poets,  in  whose  work  pastoral  was 
submerged  in  the  erotic.  He  is  dehcately  erotic  in  the  description  of 
the  dainty  maiden  and  the  green  grapes;  there  is  deUcacy  in  the  pic- 
ture of  the  pale  stars  in  the  green  firmament  —  he  rather  runs  to 
green.  There  is  a  flavor  of  humor  in  his  appeal  to  Jupiter  not  to  listen 
too  closely  to  the  praise  of  Lydia,  and  there  is  a  startling  paucity  of 
humor  elsewhere.  Morbid  refinement,  romantic  yearnings  and  lack 
of  humor  are  not  Virgihan.^  The  two  poems  cemented  together  agree 
only  in  their  general  theme  and  in  the  name  of  the  shepherd's  love. 
That  does  not  prove  it  is  the  same  shepherd,  or  the  same  Lydia.^ 
If  Valerius  Cato,  as  seems  certain,  had  won  fame  for  a  poem  about 
Lydia,  Virgil  might  well  adopt  a  name  that  had  acquired  typical  value. 
Whether  by  Valerius  Cato  or  not,'  the  Lydia  gives  us  an  important 
glimpse  into  the  literary  history  of  the  day  and  puts  the  originaUty 
of  Virgil's  achievement  in  higher  relief.  As  the  ninth  Eclogue  indi- 
cates, he  probably  found  a  group  of  pastoral  poets  in  existence,* 

*  There  is  a  vein  of  Catullan  romanticism  in  the  poem.    See  Eskuche,  p.  73. 

*  Schanz,  §99,  cannot  imagine  that  three  different  poets  could  sing  of  three  dif- 
ferent Lydias.  But  Horace  can  furnish  from  one  to  four  more  Lydias,  and  Martial 
one  or  two. 

*  W.  M.  Lindsay,  Notes  on  the  Lydia  in  Class.  Rev.,  xxxii  (1918),  62  ff.,  would 
call  Valerius  Cato  the  author.    At  any  rate,  the  Lydia  seems  the  earlier  poem. 

*  On  the  brotherhood  of  poets  to  which  Virgil  belonged,  see  the  admirable  re- 
marks by  Mackail,  Lectures  on  Poetry,  pp.  52  ff. 


184  Edward  Kennard  Rand 

amongst  whom  he  came,  as  Theocritus  amongst  contemporary  idyllists, 
like  a  refreshing  wind,  blowing  aside  the  vapors  of  decadence  and 
sentimentaUty. 

^   IX 

Our  survey  of  the  minor  poems  has  revealed  nothing,  so  far  as  I  can 
see,  that  cannot  be  reconciled  with  the  testimony  of  the  ancient  life  of 
the  poet.  Few  wish,  at  first  reading,  to  associate  Cidex,  Ciris,  and  the 
rest  with  the  author  of  Bucolics,  Georgics,  and  Aeneid.  But  careful 
pondering  discovers  many  a  flash  of  genius,  many  a  similar  trait  of 
temperament  or  of  art  that  impel  us,  or  impel  me,  to  conclude  that 
here,  too  we  find  our  Virgil.  A  pastoral  mock  heroic  at  the  age  of 
sixteen;  CatuUan  Nugae  and  a  Catullan  epylUon;  a  period  of  stern 
Lucretian  science  and  revolt  from  poetry,  culminating  in  a  poem  on  a 
1  volcano;  a  frustrated  epic  during  the  civil  wars  and  epic  stirrings  in  the 
I  other  poems;  pure  pastoral  dehght  expressed  in  various  forms;  a 
pastoral  imprecation  inspired  by  an  actual  grievance  and  reflecting 
''  contemporary  affairs  —  such  is  the  prelude  to  Virgil's  Bucolics.  It  is 
I  an  Alexandrian  prelude,  with  signs  of  a  larger  impulse.  Neither  the 
temperament  nor  the  art  of  the  poet  is  fixed.  He  reflects,  without 
harmonizing,  the  various  literary  and  philosophical  tendencies  of  the 
day.  With  an  imagination  kindled  by  the  appeal  of  the  moment,  he 
follows  now  the  Muses,  and  now  the  sterner  daughters  of  science;  it 
is  that  ancient  battle  of  which  Plato  speaks  between  philosophy  and 
poetry,  a  battle  that  Virgil  fought  till  his  dying  day. 

Such  is  the  record,  not  of  a  series  of  impeccable  masterpieces,  but 
of  the  essays  of  a  slowly  flowering  genius,  that  lies  outspread  in  the 
minor  poems.  The  process  of  flowering  is  slow,  but  the  changes  in 
any  natural  evolution  are  instantaneous  and,  when  one  compares  the 
two  states,  apparently  miraculous.  The  first  of  the  Bucolics  pub- 
lished—  it  was  probably  the  second  of  the  collection  —  must  have 
come  like  a  miracle  upon  Roman  readers;  it  announced  a  literary 
creation  in  which  the  essentia^  genius  of  the  poet  had  a  more  normal 
scope  for  its  expression  than  before  —  the  epic  pastoral.  This  event 
is  no  more  startUng  than  what  we  know  was  true  of  Horace.  The 
gap  between  Dirae,  the  last  of  the  minor  poems,  and  Eclogue  i,  the 
last  of  the  Bucolics,  is  less  wide  than  that  between  the  very  youthful 


Young  Virgil's  Poetry  185 

invectives  of  certain  Epodes  and  the  wise  urbanity  of  the  Satires. 
Suppose  that  we  knew  the  early  works  of  Horace  only  from  the  first 
book  of  the  Satires  and  a  selection  of  the  daintier  Epodes,  and  that  a 
little  volume  were  discovered,  bearing  the  name  of  Horace  as  its  au- 
thor and  containing  Lupis  et  agnis,  At  0  deorum,  Quid  immerenti, 
Rogare  longo,  Mala  soluta,  and  Quid  tibi  vis  mulier.  What  higher 
critic  worthy  of  his  calling  would  not  condemn  this  bad  Uttle  book  as 
un-Horatian?  And  yet  Book  i  of  the  Satires  appeared  in  35  B.C., 
and  the  Epodes,  unquestionably  genuine,  in  30  B.C.  Some  of  the 
pieces  in  the  collection  must  be  among  the  earUest  things  that  Horace 
did.  He  knew  their  youthfulness,  but  he  meant  posterity  to  see  all 
his  life  votiva  descriptam  tahella.  Virgil  destined  for  the  world  nothing 
but  his  best.  Both  records,  luckily,  are  preserved,  and  both  include 
the  same  event  —  youthful  crudity  magically  giving  place  to  mature 
perfection. 

The  call  to  epic,  which  sounded  its  first  challenge  in  the  Bucolics, 
came  clearer  and  clearer  thereafter  and  ultimately  was  heard  in  the 
national  and  universal  tones  of  the  Aeneid.  As  that  achievement  is 
set  in  a  plainer  fight  by  the  prophecies  of  it  in  the  Bucolics  and  the 
Georgics,  so  these  works  are  rendered  more  intelfigible  by  the  poems 
that  preceded  them.  Sudden  creations  seem  less  abrupt  when  one 
considers  the  entire  development  of  the  poet.  With  the  minor  poems 
to  guide  us,  we  can  follow,  better  than  before,  the  course  of  Virgil's 
art,  as  it  proceeds,  Uke  the  fife  of  St.  Augustine,^  di  malo  in  buono,  e 
di  buono  in  migliore,  e  di  migliore  in  ottimo. 

^  Dante,  Conv.  i,  2,  106. 


Oaylord  Bros. 

Makers 

Syracuse.  N.  Y. 

rAT.  JM.21,1908 


4iF,126 


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